2026 Zweng Awardees
The Program in Mathematics Education (PRIME) at Michigan State University is proud to announce the 2026 recipients of the Dr. Marilyn Zweng Endowed Graduate Student Award: Ahmad Kohar, Andre Payadnya, and Samantha Wald. Each of these exceptional doctoral students is committed to enhancing mathematics education through innovative practices and community engagement.
The Zweng Fellowship recognizes graduate students who actively contribute to improving mathematics teaching and learning, and who have strong ambassadorial work.
Dr. Marilyn Zweng
Dr. Marilyn Zweng, a prominent figure in mathematics education, established this endowment to support PRIME students. A graduate of Michigan State University, she earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin and served as a professor and department head at the University of Iowa. Known for her innovative teaching methods, Dr. Zweng created the television show "Mathematics with Marilyn" to promote math literacy. She passed away in August 2019, leaving behind a legacy as a philanthropist and advocate for mathematics education.
The fellowship recipients were selected based on their dedication and service to mathematics education, their work as ambassadors of mathematics education, and their mathematics education research and service.
Here are some highlights about our deserving recipients:
Ahmad Kohar (4th year student) was a mathematics teacher at both the high school and middle school levels in Indonesia. He has been involved as a teacher workshop facilitator and researcher in a non-profit foundation called YPMIPA, Yayasan Pembina Matematika dan Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam, which aims to cultivate a realistic mathematics learning environment in Indonesia. Some of the programs in teacher training were focused on improving teachers’ skills in designing meaningful context-based tasks for their teaching practices. It was through this foundation that Ahmad got to express his interest in the field of real-world context-based mathematics tasks. Ahmad worked with mathematics education researchers from across Indonesia to provide workshops on mathematics learning for primary and secondary teachers. “I am fascinated by these experiences since I had not only the opportunity to apply what I studied at my schools but also learned from real teaching practices experienced by in-service teachers,” Ahmad stated.
Since arriving to MSU in 2024, Ahmad has worked with Indonesian scholars and faculty members to organize webinars on topics such as academic publishing, teaching practices, and emerging issues in mathematics education research. To deepen his work as an ambassador of mathematics education, Ahmad would like to focus on understanding the nature of AI mediated learning through mathematical problem posing, which is his primary area of research interest. He hopes this work can contribute to supporting secondary mathematics teachers and teacher educators in developing more critical, human centered, and culturally responsive approaches to integrating AI into mathematics learning. Ahmad is actively engaged in research through his work with the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP), where he is contributing to studies on the integration of artificial intelligence within a digital collaborative platform for a problem-based curriculum. This work has already led to a co-authored research article published in Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education. In addition, he is the lead author on a book chapter focused on problem posing with generative artificial intelligence. Ahmad has demonstrated strong engagement with the broader educational research community, with presentations at the MSU Annual Graduate Academic Conference, the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) conference, and the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA) conference. Overall, Ahmad has an impressive record of academic achievement, research productivity, and professional engagement.
Andre Payadnya (2nd year student) has taught students in elementary, middle, and high school settings in Indonesia. Over the past eight years, he has taught and conducted research in mathematics education, earning recognition as an Associate Professor at his home institution in Indonesia. In addition to his role as a lecturer, he has served as the Head of the Education Development Department in the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education at his university. In 2021, Andre was awarded the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Initiative. As part of it, he spent four months conducting research at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. This transformative venture, in his own words, allowed him to refine his ideas about “innovative learning designs, fruitful collaboration with international academics, and publishing in reputable international journals”. The experience also gave him confidence in navigating global academic spaces, supported by mentorship and international partnerships that continue to shape his work today.
Since arriving at MSU, Andre has been highly productive in his research, with multiple articles at various stages, including work under review and ongoing collaborative projects. His research studies show clear growth, particularly in expanding from a primarily quantitative background to incorporating qualitative and mixed methods approaches. He is enjoying and learning from his research experiences in CMP. He has also presented at multiple conferences. His achievements have been recognized with the Tracy A. Hammer Graduate Student Award. Overall, he demonstrates excellent academic performance, strong research engagement, and continued intellectual development.
Samantha Wald (4th year student) taught high school mathematics for seven years, as well as precalculus at a community college before joining PRIME. Samantha hopes to further her interest in how culturally responsive teaching and equity-based practices impact the student-teacher and student-student relationship and how that affects motivation and classroom performance. After graduating from PRIME, she hopes to become a secondary mathematics methods professor, and potentially teach developmental mathematics as well.
Samantha has made numerous contributions to Mathematics Education since her arrival to MSU in the Fall of 2023. During her first year, she was the instructor for TE 802, TE 804, TE 416, and was a field instructor. All of these experiences included mentoring and facilitating discussion with pre-service teachers. Her current research experience has come from working with CMP. Throughout the last semester, she has gained experience in gathering literature for a group written literature review, data collection through observation in classrooms, watching video data for traits of certain CMP phases, helping with CMP4, and attending research planning meetings. She is also a member of the PRIME Student Advisory Committee and has presented at several conferences including AMTE and the state chapter MI-AMTE, as well as the CREATE4STEM mini-conference. CREATE4STEM is an MSU-sponsored institute with a broad mandate for Collaborative Research in Education, Assessment and Teaching Environments for the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Awards Smantha has received since coming to MSU include the Lappan-Phillips-Fitzgerald (LPF) Fellowship, Outstanding Scholar Fellowship (OSF) and Summer Research Fellowship (SRF).
Congratulations Ahmad, Andre, and Samantha!
From left to right: Ahmad Kohar, Andre Payadnya, Samantha Wald
