Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) undergraduate students Kayla Kerr and Mason Huffman spent their summer working with mathematics faculty to create a new workshop series aimed at helping middle school students strengthen their math skills. The workshops are designed to prepare participants for the 2026 AMC 8, an American Mathematics Competition for eighth-grade students and below, which will begin in January.
The AMC 8 is the first in a series of secondary school competitions sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America that ultimately determine the U.S. team for the International Mathematical Olympiad each year. FGCU’s program plans to enroll 30 students, focusing on enhancing their mathematical problem-solving abilities, building confidence, and increasing interest in advanced math topics.
Kerr, a junior majoring in software engineering, and Huffman, a dual-enrollment student studying mathematics and physics, co-authored lesson plans for the workshops and serve as lead instructors. Their work will also be part of ongoing research measuring how the workshops affect student learning and problem-solving development.
“My mom was a teacher for many years,” said Kerr. “So when Professor Huffman told me that the research involved workshops with students, I was very excited. This is a chance for me to follow in my mom’s footsteps and to have an impact on young individuals.”
Both students have previous experience as teaching assistants at FGCU outreach events such as the Immokalee Foundation Summer Camp and Mathletes Circle, an initiative run by FGCU’s Department of Mathematics. Over the summer, they helped lead another FGCU program for middle schoolers; Kerr taught drone coding sessions while Huffman introduced solar car technology basics.
“The reason I wanted to join is this provides me with additional experience interacting with middle school students and it furthers my teaching skills, as well as practicing delivering presentations to a non-technical audience,” said Mason Huffman.
Faculty supervisor Daniel Kern highlighted their qualifications: “We have known Kayla Kerr since spring 2024, when she was a student in Tanya’s precalculus class, and I have worked with Mason on a research project which was presented at the national math conference in Seattle in January 2025,” Kern said. “Both students are academically high-achieving and have successfully completed upper-level math courses. Not only are they academically outstanding, but they have also shown a strong commitment to outreach programs offered through the Whitaker Institute for STEM Education and Mathletes Circle.”
The project received $15,000 through a Seidler Student/Faculty Collaboration Fellowship Grant awarded to Kern and mathematics faculty member Tanya Huffman. These grants aim to encourage collaborative undergraduate research projects guided by faculty mentors.
Tanya Huffman said that FGCU’s Mathletes Circle inspired this latest workshop effort: “Mathletes Circle, AMC 8 and the workshop project are all ‘grounded in the idea that middle school age is the pivotal stage for developing problem-solving and higher-order math and analytical thinking,'” she said.
“While many students can do well in middle school math classes, the AMC 8 competition is unique because the problems require that extra level of analytical thinking,” Huffman added. “The problems are more challenging than the problems they typically will encounter in a regular math course. So the idea came about to create a workshop that helps the students develop this higher-order thinking, to build those foundational skills and spark the interest in students to progress to the next, more advanced math course or participate in future math competitions.”
