- Professor Ke Wu, Program Director
- Professor Kelly McKinnie, Awards and summer coordinator.
- Professor Jenny McNulty, Mentor and Student Support Coordinator
- Professor Emily Stone, Recruitment Specialist
2019 Undergraduate Scholars
My name is Martin Romero and I am from El Salvador. I moved to Texas when I was 17 to finish High School in the US. I visited Montana when I was 21 to enjoy the beauty of nature and after a summer I decided to stay here. I am pursuing a Bachelor in Mathematics at the University of Montana. After that I will attend Montana Tech to major in Electrical Engineering. My passion for mathematics was born from going to a college level math and science program in El Salvador since I was 13. There, I was taught that math did not need to be this tedious process where you do the same steps over and over in order to get to the final answer, but rather, it could be a puzzle where you had no idea how to solve it so it was up to your imagination to figure out one of the many paths that could lead you to the final answer. Besides going to School I like spending time on the outdoors either hiking, climbing, rafting, or camping because it challenges me to be focused while enjoying nature at the same time. I love country music, rock, metal, classical music, jazz, funk, fusion, salsa, bachata, merengue, tango, cumbia, and reggaeton. Food is life for me too, specially seafood or a medium rare steak.
Denise LaFontaine is a junior at the University of Montana and hopes to graduate in December 2019 with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics with a Statistics option and a bachelor's degree in Sociology with a Criminology option. Denise is from Fort Benton, Montana and attended Gonzaga University for a year before transferring back to her home state to attend school. She enjoys watching and playing sports, hanging out with her family, binge watching Netflix, and occasional various outdoor activities. Academically, Denise is interested in reading up on the criminal justice system and the law, particularly past court cases and decisions. She plans to attend law school starting in 2020 with hopes of being a criminal prosecutor in the future.
Esther is a current freshman at the University of Montana and a 2018 graduate of Hellgate High School in Missoula. She is pursuing a double major in Mathematics with an Applied Math concentration and Biology with a Field Ecology concentration, with the goal of finding a career that uses mathematical reasoning to solve problems in the biological and environmental sciences. Her love for math began in 6th grade with an especially enthusiastic and inspiring math teacher, and matured in her senior year of high school when she saw how the subject pushes us to stay humble and continually adopt a persistent attitude of hard work, while working her way up from a D to a B after getting too confident before an exam on vectors. Esther enjoys attending dances, hiking mountains, soaking in hot springs, second hand shopping, doing random backflips and having a good-natured philosophical debate. She has taken tango and rock climbing classes for credit, plays cello in the UM symphony, and can sometimes be found tossing a frisbee on the oval.
