mathematics

Maura Mast

Maura Mast is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Maura Mast rather than just read about it. In short: Maura B. Mast is an Irish-American mathematician, mathematics educator, and academic administrator who is the president-elect of Seattle University.

Key takeaways

Maura Mast belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Maura Mast to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Maura Mast from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Maura B. Mast is an Irish-American mathematician, mathematics educator, and academic administrator who is the president-elect of Seattle University. She will assume office as the school's 23rd president, and first woman president, on September 1, 2026. Her research specialties are in differential geometry and quantitative reasoning. With Ethan D. Bolker, she is the author of the textbook Common Sense Mathematics.

Early life and education Mast is the daughter of Cecil B. Mast (1927–2008), a mathematics professor at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Her mother was Irish, and Mast has dual Irish and American citizenship. She grew up in South Bend and did her undergraduate studies at Notre Dame, with a double major in mathematics and anthropology. She completed her doctorate in mathematics in 1992 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation, Closed Geodesics in 2-step Nilmanifolds, concerned the differential geometry of geodesics on curved surfaces, and was supervised by Pat Eberlein.

Career Mast became a faculty member at the University of Northern Iowa in 1992. After visiting professorships at Northeastern University and Wellesley College, she moved to the University of Massachusetts Boston in 1998. There, in 2009, she became associate vice provost for undergraduate studies. In 2015, she came to Fordham University as the first female dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill. In 2022, she was promoted to the rank of full professor at Fordham University. In June 2026, she was named the 23rd president of Seattle University, becoming the first woman to serve in the role.

Activism Mast has been an active member of the Clavius Group, a group of Jesuit and lay mathematicians, and is a strong supporter of the Jesuit vision of Catholic spirituality. She has also been a passionate advocate for the advancement of women in mathematics and science, which she writes is "crucial for the future of the country and for women". She has participated in the governance of the Association for Women in Mathematics as Clerk and Executive Committee member of the association. Mast was chair of the Special Interest Group on Quantitative Literacy of the Mathematical Association of America for 2006–2007.

Books Common Sense Mathematics (with Ethan D. Bolker, Mathematical Association of America, 2016) Women in Mathematics: Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America (edited with Janet Beery, Sarah J. Greenwald, and Jacqueline Jensen-Vallin, Springer, 2017)

Recognition In 2017 Mast was given the Association for Women in Mathematics Service Award. The Association for Women in Mathematics has included Mast in the 2020 class of AWM Fellows for "her sustained and deep contributions to promoting and encouraging the participation of women in the mathematical sciences through AWM, the Joint Committee on Women, the MAA, and through leadership in academia".

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Maura Mast

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Maura Mast claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Maura Mast before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Maura Mast ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Maura Mast

In research: Maura Mast appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Maura Mast in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Maura Mast is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American mathematicians, 20th-century American women mathematicians, 21st-century American mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Maura Mast outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Maura Mast in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Maura Mast means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Maura Mast out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Maura Mast in simple terms?

Maura B. Mast is an Irish-American mathematician, mathematics educator, and academic administrator who is the president-elect of Seattle University.

Why does Maura Mast matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Maura Mast?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Maura Mast.