Eyes flit across the paper, mirroring the pencil’s motion. Intense focus accompanies the ideas churning from the mind’s grinding gears at a speed that feels all too slow. Shavings trail across the perimeter of the working space, disregarded, with the only sense of recognition being the newly filed-down mold taken up by the eraser.

How long has it been? Time remains elusive; the clock may have ticked away the minutes, yet for a young mind immersed in mathematical exploration, time is but a malleable companion. Soon enough, it happened — a click. Not an audible sound in the slightest, but a sensation as everything fell into place. And there it was: the finished paper, a documentation of a diligent work effort and a quiet reminder of a student’s boundless potential when allowed to turn a challenge into a gateway for understanding.

Home to a realm of economic activity, New York’s Financial District is located in lower Manhattan. Each set of buildings comprising the neighborhood exhibits a diverse array of styles from different eras, each narrating their respective purposes in becoming additions to the district’s history for all who roam its streets.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of the district, The Edwin Gould Foundation stands wedged between Broad Street and William Street. The building houses the command center of an organization devoting its time to improving educational equity in under-resourced communities. 

One of their missions revolve around providing essential services to nonprofit organizations and educational initiatives. One such program, guided by their expertise, is the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM). On the sixth floor of The Edwin Gould Foundation, where BEAM’s headquarters resides, you’ll encounter the visionary founder of this program, Dan Zaharopol.

Originally known as the “Summer Program in Mathematical Problem Solving” (SPMPS), Mr. Zaharopol established the program during the summer of 2011. The inaugural session welcomed a total of 17 students, all of whom were sixth graders residing in The Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, where they attended a variety of math courses they hadn’t encountered before. As the initiative gained momentum, the BEAM team expanded beyond its original scope as a summer program. This evolution ultimately led to the name change in 2015, reflecting the organization’s broader mission and impact.

While a STEM education offers a diverse set of career prospects, not all students receive adequate preparation. “Only 20 percent of high school graduates are prepared for college-level coursework in STEM majors,” noted Bridget Long, Dean at Harvard Graduate School. To bridge this gap, the BEAM foundation strives to provide support for underrepresented students in marginalized and low-income communities.

Zaharopol kindly agreed to do an interview with me to delve more into the BEAM program. Below, I’ve included excerpts from our conversation:

Q: What was your connection with STEM when you were a student and what led you to pursue a career in mathematics?

“I have always been interested in STEM since I was a kid; my main interests were science, astronomy, and physics. When I was younger, it was mostly books that connected me to these fields, and later, it became the summer camps I attended. I modeled BEAM after many of those experiences because they had such a significant impact on me. I always enjoyed math, I suppose, but it wasn’t something I truly loved until much later, and it wasn’t something I thought was special until I saw how it all fit together.”

How did BEAM expand from being a summer program to being a series of Programs and providing additional resources to students? 

Q: “When we first started, we thought, ‘Oh, we should do more than just the summer program.’ We understood the benefits of attending the summer program, but we wondered who was providing opportunities and resources for people to build on what they learned and continue to succeed. Initially, it was just me, and I was only doing it part-time. As we grew and secured funding, we decided to expand our support. We began considering the needs of our students, including those in 9th grade. We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do for 9th graders?’ And everything fell into place. In hindsight, I kind of wish we had initially designed a more structured program instead of thinking, ‘What can we do now?’ However, as we reflect, we’re grateful for how it all unfolded. Looking back, that is totally how we’d want to redesign things to create a greater impact and coherence. So, by actually seeing how we set up the whole program to support students throughout, I think that the biggest thing was recognizing we could do a lot more for people.”

Q: What are your thoughts on math anxiety? 

“I think math anxiety can affect anyone and that there are two forms of it. One kind is competitive math anxiety, where you’re worried about other people being better than you. Another kind is an inward-facing one, where you’re worried about realizing you can’t do something or demonstrating you can’t do something. I very much understand where people get it from, and I’ve been in situations where I am like, ‘I’m intimidated to do math with this person because what if they think I don’t know math,’ but a way to get better at math is to just do it and challenge yourself so we’re trying to help people adjust to overcome that and to simply do the math, explore it, and even have fun with it.

Math anxiety isn’t too prevalent at the summer programs themselves because the kind of math we do is so different from what people have done before, and part of that is because we work so hard to create a community. I think what does happen is someone who goes to BEAM thinks, ‘Oh, I did Bridge into Entering Advanced Mathematics, and that was really fancy.’ The truth is people come from lots of different schools, and not everyone has the same level of mathematical preparation in school, and the step up from middle school is pretty substantial.

What we do get is students struggling with math later on, they worry about reaching out and talking to BEAM about it because they worried their being judged and about not living up to the title, and from our perspective, it’s counterproductive because we are not trying to hold people to a certain standard, we are trying help to each person be challenged and succeed. We have a lot of resources to tutor people with school math because we recognize that everyone has had different experiences, so you get this anxiety around them thinking, ‘Do I belong at BEAM?’ Which I really wish people didn’t get because everyone at BEAM belongs at BEAM, and it’s so sad people pull away from that.” 

Q: Along with fun math problems and puzzles, you offer quite a bit of leisure activity. What is the purpose?

“Definitely to build community and give people the opportunity to build friendships. Another part of it is we want the programs to be about opening horizons. We want the program to be about discovering new things that are and aren’t math. There are a bunch of games and activities that math-y people tend to enjoy that we want to expose people to. There’s this card game called Set, and it’s a game where there are different amounts, types, and colors of shapes on each card, and your goal is to get 3 cards together where you’re able to get a pattern down. That’s a game people who like math enjoy, and if you find yourself going to another math setting in the future, you may find people playing Set, and then you’ll feel like you are a part of that because you’re like, ‘oh, I already know how to play that, I am part of this community and I already know several things that people do.’ A big part of this community was discovering new things and having a head start on what STEM communities are like later on.”

Q: How important is collaboration in the BEAM program, and how does it approach promoting working with others?

“We do a lot of group work at BEAM and prioritize getting people to work on the whiteboards together and getting people working on teams. Part of that is because we think it helps people learn from each other and others and part of it is because we care a lot about people seeing a community around doing math and STEM. A lot of the time, I think you see it as something you do on your own, and we wanted to make it clear that students don’t have to be on their own and have them realize that it’s a group thing, that it’s you and your friends together. Due to this, they may be closer to some of your friends when you do math, not in the sense of their friendliness, but just being naturally aligned with one another. Even throughout the program, it’s not just about mathematics; we spend a lot of time making sure people are tied to their friends. We do activities together and do all sorts of things to build a community because to me, that is such an important part of life: having a community and recognizing that if you want to do this thing, other people do too.”

Q: The admissions tests for the program seem to be more about caring how you go about trying to get to an answer rather than getting the questions right or wrong. Why was it designed in this manner?

“I have always been a part of these enrichment programs that focus on really understanding what’s going on, and it was completely natural to make that into BEAM because it’s what I’ve been a part of the whole time. I grew up seeing a real difference between the math I did at school and the math I did outside of school. In school, it was all about the right answer, and that doesn’t matter after the regents. Then I did these math summer camps where the way you get the right answer mattered because it was about the way you’re thinking about it rather than just where you end up. You may get the answer right at the moment, but it doesn’t prepare you for future, more complex problems, getting the concept does. When I got to college, that became even more important.”

“I was talking to a former BEAM student recently, she’s in college now, and she was telling me how, during her time at BEAM programs, she learned all of these different techniques and notation that mathematicians have used that she was applying in her college education. She tells me how her friend always asks her how she knows all this material and can pick up on certain things quickly. It’s all just so helpful because it’s all just second nature for her. Many students talk a lot about how they would go to BEAM and find that their higher education would reflect similarly to what they got from BEAM, and it had a good impact on them. We did a study where we compared students who went to BEAM with those who were waitlisted, and BEAM students were 1 ½ times more likely to declare a STEM major and more likely to go to college. 90% of BEAM students go to college, so it’s kind of like, ‘Oh, it’s not just the people we talk to who say BEAM made a difference for them, but we can also see the difference in the numbers?’ That’s pretty awesome.”

Whether it’s igniting those first sparks for the world of STEM at BEAM Discovery the summer of their 6th grade, creating a firm foundation for possible career options and guidance to achieve those goals with BEAM Pathway after 7th grade, assisting with the high school application process in 8th grade, or offering college advising along with several addition opportunities during high school BEAM has been a program that allows students to fulfill their full potential by leveraging their resources and passion for growth.

On the sixth floor of The Edwin Gould Foundation, where BEAM’s headquarters resides, you’ll encounter the visionary founder of this program, Dan Zaharopol.