Violeta Vasilevska

Biography

I was born and raised in Republic of North Macedonia where I received my bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics. In 2000, I came to the US, received my doctorate degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and in 2010 joined the Department of Mathematics at Utah Valley University, where I currently hold the rank of professor. My research interests are diverse, ranging from topics in pure mathematics to topics in math education, to connections of math and art. In addition, I enjoy mentoring students through undergraduate research. I have mentored students in research projects that connect technology, math, and art (especially origami). I am passionate about teaching, and in my classes, I implement various active learning, student-centered approaches and cultivate an inclusive, interactive, and engaged environment, while showing sincere care and respect for my students and their diverse learning styles. In addition, I try to incorporate my passion for Origami, crafts, and art into my teaching through various engaging projects. Since 2007, I have been leading and participating in various outreach programs that popularize mathematics, especially ones that encourage and support women in mathematics. As a result, I have been involved and interested in researching the effects of after school math programs on the high school women’s attitude towards mathematics through my outreach program Math Girls Rock!. In addition, this outreach involvement has deepened my interest in working towards connecting math and art. I have been regularly developing projects for these outreach programs that illustrate math-art connection: various math and origami projects, projects that involve beading and knitting, projects to produce art designs using technology etc. I have received several awards recognizing my teaching excellence, service, and my outreach efforts. Among my hobbies are my love for Origami and art, reading, traveling, and learning about different cultures.

Looks

About the look

Truncated Tetrahedron Earrings and a Pendant

Crystal beads and a beading thread

2025

The presented art pieces are earrings and a pendant that are beaded frames of the truncated tetrahedron. They were made using crystal beads and a beading thread. The beading was done following the structure of the truncated tetrahedron. Instructions can be found here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/12FgrhKGqQnugvy-5vw_DqOP1mQ0Virn1/view). A truncated tetrahedron is obtained from the Platonic Solid – tetrahedron, through operation called uniform truncation. The tetrahedron is a regular, convex polyhedron, that has special properties: all its faces are congruent regular, convex polygons-triangles and at each vertex three of the faces meet. Truncation of a polyhedron is an operation of cutting polyhedron vertices, creating a new face in place of each of the vertices. Uniform truncation is a special kind of truncation on a regular polyhedron (including the tetrahedron) such that the original faces become regular polygons with twice as many sides as the original polygons. The truncated tetrahedron has two types of regular polygons as faces: hexagonal (faces that have double the sides as the original triangular faces) and triangular (faces obtained by cutting the vertices of the tetrahedron). This solid is a semiregular or Archimedean solid, meaning that all the faces are regular polygons, but not necessarily all congruent to each other. Note that all hexagonal faces are congruent to each other, and all triangular faces are congruent to each other, but hexagonal faces are not congruent to the triangular faces. The truncated tetrahedron is also highly symmetric, has a fascinating structure, and amazing visual display.