Dr. Forest Mannan Receives 2025 Early Career Teaching Award

At first, it didn’t seem like a big change. But when Western’s Dr. Forest Mannan started referring to ‘office hours’ as ‘student hours’, it revealed something about how the Assistant Professor of Mathematics approaches teaching.

Shifting the focus from professor to student was simple yet profound. And it was just part of an innovative approach to teaching that earned Mannan recognition from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).

Mannan, who joined Western in the fall of 2019, received the 2025 Early Career Teaching Award from the Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA. The award recognizes mathematics educators who have made significant contributions to their academic communities in the first seven years of their careers.

For Mannan, it was the love of mathematics that led him to teaching. After graduating from The Evergreen State College, he wasn’t ready to be done being a student. So he enrolled in a graduate program at Tulane University, where he taught his first class. “My interest in teaching math solidified when I first taught as a graduate student,” he said.

During his time in the discipline, he’s come to see that there are two main motivations to study math. The first is a love of logic, either proving or disproving theorems, which he calls “math for math’s sake.” The other is understanding that math unlocks the language in which our reality is written. “I enjoy teaching math in particular when I am able to see students appreciating both these aspects,” he said, “and how they are interconnected.”

Mannan’s colleague and chair of the Math and Computer Science Department, Dr. Jeremy Muskat, sees him as someone who incorporates active learning in the classroom, pushing his students to stay engaged and curious.

“Forest has a knack for self-reflection and adapting to the needs of his students. He does this with regular surveys and collaborating with colleagues on best practices that each of us uses,” Muskat said. “Forest has distilled his teaching into the best practices of what happens on campus, but more importantly, given back to the rest of us who have learned from him.”

For Mannan, the award isn’t recognition of a job well done; it’s recognition of his potential to do great things.

“Like most things, one’s teaching and impact in the classroom can always be improved,” he said. “I still feel like I am very much still developing as a teacher, and I see this award as a validation of my commitment to the craft and an acknowledgment of my continuing diligent efforts to improve the experiences of students in my classes.”