Junior Allison Shen said she has always enjoyed math class, despite noticing that her peers don’t share the same love. So, Shen decided to do something about it. Now, Shen is the co-founder of Infinity Squared, a non-profit that seeks to empower young minds in mathematics through events, tutoring and free lectures. 

“During our (my and Shen’s co-founder’s) middle school and elementary school years we noticed that not a lot of students shared the same passion as us and we thought that was mainly because of the school curriculum not showing math in a way that was enhancing or fun,” Shen said. “So we decided to form our organization that allows us to share the beautiful sides of mathematics.”

Shen said she wanted Infinity Squared to focus more on problem-solving, rather than memorizing formulas. 

“I think (the school curriculum) is mainly lacking variety or creative problem solving because normally in mathematics or in your math class, you’re just plugging in numbers into a formula,” Shen said. “Through Infinity Squared, we hope to introduce more problems that are more problem-solving like Sudoku.”

Melinda Stephan, college and career programming coordinator, said passion projects are a great way for students to have an impact on their communities and gain career skills.

“Often passion projects are related to a student’s career interests and give them an opportunity to apply and ‘try out’ what they know about a topic in ways that have the potential to make change and/or do good for others,” Stephan said via email. “When students can see passion projects come to life and/or see how their volunteer efforts make a difference, it helps them gain a stronger understanding of why they are doing things like studying (and) showing up for school or work.”

Community Impact

Senior Michael Bao also has a passion project. Bao is the contest director for Indigo Coding Competition, a global programming contest where pre-college students can showcase their competitive programming skills. According to Bao, the goal of the competition is to encourage a love of programming and computer science and promote learning between students. 

Bao said he believes Indigo Coding has had an impact on this community.

“I think it’s grown awareness around what competitive programming is and how to get into it, which I think is amazing,” Bao said.

Stephan also said students participating in their communities through passion projects helps them learn outside of the classroom. 

“I believe that getting involved in the community doesn’t just prepare students for college, it prepares them for life,” Stephan said. “Ultimately they will become members of their local community, professional community, social communities, and more. Engaging in their school community and the community at large during high school helps students see how they might engage with their chosen communities later.”

Shen said she thinks Infinity Squared has had an impact on the Carmel community as well.

“The biggest impact is just through us meeting students from our community,” Shen said. “I’ve learned a lot about what students find passionate about mathematics. I feel like that’s something really strong and that’s what’s allowed us to keep going, is just to know that students can discover the beauty of mathematics within what we do and what we share.”

Career Skills

Stephan said passion projects give students many transferable career skills.

“Things like organization, communication, collaboration/teamwork, problem solving, project/event planning and more are skills that students often develop and use in their extracurricular endeavors, and these are the same skills that make for a successful professional in any career area,” Stephan said.

Shen said Infinity Squared has allowed her to learn about business.

“Infinity squared has allowed me to learn a lot about nonprofit organizations and how they work,” Shen said. “A nonprofit organization is technically a business so I learned a lot about the business aspect as well as communicating with sponsors and advocating ourselves within the community to get our word out.”

Shen said what she’s learned through Infinity Squared has directly taught her about her chosen career field.

“I definitely want to go into something STEM related or even math related and I look towards doing something related to applied mathematics when I actually have a career,” Shen said.

Bao said Indigo Coding has also given him useful skills for his future career.

“I think it’s given me practical skills in communication, public speaking, and working with groups of people,” Bao said.

Future Goals

Infinity Squared offers one-on-one tutoring for students and has a variety of free lectures at the library. Shen said she hopes to grow Infinity Squared’s reach even more, especially through competitions.

“So we do have a 2024 winter math competition upcoming and we hope to have at least 100 students at that event,” Shen said. “Looking toward the spring, we look forward to hosting more lectures as we get more sponsors, so we have more money and more time to actually dedicate to our cause.”

Bao also said he has goals for the future of the club.

“I think we are going to try and grow the amount of people who compete and (grow) our sponsorship list,” Bao said.

Ultimately, Stephan said passion projects are valuable for building skills and applying to college.

“(Colleges) want to admit students who will get engaged in a wide variety of activities and community engagement, so that they can maintain a vibrant and active campus in and out of the classroom,” Stephan said. “In sum, follow your own path when it comes to choosing how to spend your time outside of the classroom.”