NORTHBROOK, IL — Out of 1,600 gifted mathematic students, only one can say they won the Math Competition for Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing this year, and they attend Northbrook Junior High School. Eighth-grader Matthew Ciancanelli recently won the national competition, put on by the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Ciancanelli, who is taking Honors Algebra 2 at Glenbrook North High School, had been preparing for several weeks with the support of his math teacher and sponsors Becky Heller and Meghan Henry, according to Northbrook School District 28.
Ciancanelli said when the competition started on March 23, he easily completed the first two rounds in about 15 minutes instead of the allotted 45 minutes. The third and fourth rounds were conducted live over Zoom. The questions got a little more complicated and the championship came down to a tie-breaker. He captured first place by solving the equation in about 30 seconds.
“Matthew is a fun student to work with because he enjoys problem-solving and is always ready to think outside the box. He can also work quickly, which is what led to his success in the competition finals. It was a very exciting way to win!” said Mary Claire Seeberg, his math teacher at NJHS.
Ciancanelli prefers complicated word problems to geometry and theorems, according to the district. He is hearing impaired, so teachers wear an audio assist microphone to support him in the classroom and he otherwise navigates typical classrooms. The competition was sponsored by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, one of nine colleges of RIT.
“I think this experience opened me up to see possibilities for math competitions in the future,” Ciancanelli said.
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