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Berner ( continued ) Berner chose the topic of math anxiety among Elementary Education majors during HON 390 — a class designed for Honors students to determine their thesis topic — after reading an article about how a majority of elementary teachers struggle with math- related anxiety. Through further research, she gleaned that math anxiety affects the way that these teachers will approach the subject in their classrooms: “If they have high levels of math anxiety, they’re more likely to spend less time teaching it, and they’re also more likely to communicate more negative feelings to their students about math, which promotes the negative stigma that math already has in our society,” Berner explained. Elementary school is often the first time young pupils encounter mathematics. It is important for them not to be unintentionally primed to have negative feelings towards math that might last through the rest of their lives. She conducted her research by sending surveys to fifteen different universities throughout the country to be distributed to Elementary Education majors. Afterwards, she compared the respondents’ perception of their learning environment to their reported levels of math anxiety. She thoroughly enjoyed talking with the judges and other attendees at the National Collegiate Honors Conference about her research. “The cool thing is that after I gave my spiel about my research, a lot of them would tell me personal stories that were either about what they remembered from their own childhood, or about their children’s experiences with math anxiety,” Berner reflected. Other attendees shared their own fears with her that they were conveying their negative feelings to their own students and contributing to the stigma surrounding mathematics. She has hopes to further her research on math anxiety in the form of a graduate school dissertation: “I would like to do something with figuring out the best practices for relieving math anxiety in preservice teachers. I plan on doing this continuing my research I did this time around on a larger scale. Also, I would like to go into Elementary Math Methods classrooms to interview both the students and the professors.” Then, she hopes to observe lessons to determine what is working to alleviate math anxiety in future teachers and what is not. Finally, she plans to utilize her findings to create techniques for preservice elementary teachers to conquer their own math anxiety, thus allowing them to be successful in their future math lessons. Berner encourages everyone with undergraduate research to apply to present their findings at the National Collegiate Honors Conference: “You might not think that it is something that you’re able to do. I definitely did not think that I would get accepted, much less win the entire thing within my category. Plus, you get to nerd out and talk about what you’ve been studying for a semester with somebody, and that’s really fun.” She noted that the conference is also “like a mini- vacation”. Although the attendees were primarily in the city to present their research, they had the chance to tour the city of Atlanta. Berner remarked that she thoroughly enjoyed touring the Civil Rights Museum, and she described it as “one of the most powerful museums that [she] has ever gone to”. She also enjoyed listening to the speech by Bryan Stevenson, the author of the 2016 Common Read novel, Just Mercy . Berner is an active member of the Honors program on campus. She describes it as “a little family” where one can make friends with similar interests. She mentioned that Honors program advisor, Dr. Erin Fouberg, had a positive impact on her growth and success during her time at Northern. “She has forced me to grow a lot because she has pushed me and she has had very high expectations for me,” Berner said. When she is not working on her Honors thesis, you can find Berner working as a math lab instructor and a math tutor: “Both have helped me in my confidence in my ability to teach, and have reassured me that teaching is right for me. Just seeing how you can have students go from ‘I don’t get it, I don’t get it’ to ‘I get it’ because you’ve explained it to them it a different way is really cool.” After graduation, Berner plans to teach high school mathematics and eventually attend graduate school. H O N O R S A L U M N I N E W S L E T T E R 3 N O R T H E R N S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y