Career spotlight: Meike Akveld
Meike Akveld writes about her successful STEM career, the beauty of mathematics and her presidency of the international Kangaroo Association (AKSF).
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My experience in high school enabled me to take over the presidency of the Swiss Kangaroo in 2012, and I became the president of the international Kangaroo Association (AKSF) in 2019. The goal of AKSF is to spread the joy of mathematics, and its main activity is the organisation of the annual multiple choice Kangaroo maths competition for all school age groups. It is all about joining in and having fun, and in 2019, the year before the pandemic, over 6 million children took part.
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The competition is offered in 6 levels (Year 1 and 2, Year 3 and 4 etc up to Year 11 and 12), and each paper comprises questions worth 3, 4 and 5 points. The difficulty increases throughout, and the last few questions on the paper are challenging, but the initial 3-point questions are meant to be solvable by everyone – so that all children can and should take part. All the questions are designed to show that maths is everywhere and that maths is fun. Kangaroo questions can also be used in schools after the competitions, offering a rich variety of beautiful, non-standard problems that can enormously benefit mathematics teaching.
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external pageThe Johnian Blog, St John’s College, 8 March 2021
