Melanie Khiem

Mathematics is a language that Melanie Khiem and her immigrant parents both understand. 

For that reason, she has loved math ever since she began elementary school in Lowell.

“My parents are from Cambodia; they don’t speak a whole lot of English, and they couldn’t teach me how to read a book,” she says. “But when I was in first and second grade, they taught me multiplication and division before I even learned it in school, and that put me a little ahead.”

Khiem has kept that edge ever since, sailing through her AP tests in Calculus I and II while she was still at Lowell High School. At UMass Lowell, she majored in math and worked as a math tutor and classroom learning assistant. 

As she approached her final year at UMass Lowell, she continued to explore the many career paths open to someone with her skills and experience.

At first, Khiem had joined UTeach, an education minor for science, math and engineering majors who want to teach in middle or high school. After two years and some classroom experience, though, she decided that teaching was not for her. 

She also tried computer science classes: same story.

Next, she decided to try some business classes and research, thanks to a $2,500 Roads to Research tuition scholarship from the River Hawk Scholars Academy (RHSA), UML’s support program for first-generation college students. 

“I am kind of a quiet person, and I do like to do things on my own, and my RHSA success coach thought that research might interest me,” she says.

Khiem spent the summer after her sophomore year working with Visiting Lecturer Matthew Beyranevand, the university’s precalculus coordinator, reading and summarizing existing academic studies on whether students who take Algebra I in eighth grade and calculus as high school seniors are better prepared for college-level math than those who start algebra in high school and save calculus for college.

So far, their research suggests that most of the early-start students are not.

“At the end of this, hopefully we can dig a little bit more and actually run an experiment to find out if this is true or not,” Khiem says. 

Khiem has taken advantage of many other opportunities, too. She joined the UML Marching Band her first year, playing vibraphone. 

The following summer, she used a $4,000 Immersive Scholars award to study the history of jazz and blues at the American College of Greece, then began working as a host and server at Tavern in the Square.

As a sophomore, she kept working at the restaurant while serving as a peer leader in the RHSA, providing informal advice to first-year, first-generation college students – including telling them they should take advantage of the faculty and staff affiliated with the program.

“I love our RHSA staff,” Khiem says. “They just offered an ear. … Going through your first year of college, it’s a small gesture, but it means a lot.”

Khiem, who plans to complete her degree in three years, is still deciding what she will do afterward. But she says her parents aren’t too worried about it.  

“Knowing the kind of person I am, they know that I have the work ethic to at least have something going on,” she says.