Lauren is the Director and co-Founder of the non-profit, MathHappens. MathHappens works to help museums, cultural institutions and informal educators provide authentic math programming that is relevant to their core offerings. UTeach team members conduct site visits, engage in content research develop concepts and ideas and then create a model or exhibit to fit and facilitate the learning opportunity. Following completion of her own UTeach program, Lauren served as a math teacher, department head and Apprentice Teacher mentor. In collaboration with with three UTeach professors Lauren published Teaching Algebra and Geometry Concepts by Modeling Telescope Optics, Mathematics Teacher in 2008. The article idea began with a UTeach Project Based Instruction course and it is really a great example of leveraging a maker experience to share and teach core math concepts and it is a precursor to Lauren’s work at MathHappens.