Memories and recent history of the PSU Math Club
The purpose of this essay is to collect my memories of the Penn State Math Club and explain its recent history as I know it, focusing on the founding of the PSU Math 2.0 Discord server. This content was written by Algebraity (Harrison Lemley) on September 15th, 2026.
All memories and experiences in this essay are my own and do not represent an official club history. 0% of the text in this essay was generated or edited by AI, and the content of this essay is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
My early days with the Math Club
I first attended the Math Club when I was a freshman at PSU in 2021. I got very lost on my way to the McAllister Building, which is the home of the Math Department at PSU. I somehow ended up going back and forth between Osmond Lab and the library looking for it. Eventually a kind upperclassman who was a club officer told me the building was next to the HUB, and I managed to find my way, though I was very late.
Since my first year at PSU was during the era of COVID, mask restrictions became strict as winter set in, and many students stopped attending the club. I don't think I went to the club again for the rest of the semester, nor was I very active in other clubs either.
I would not end up increasing my level of activity in the Math Club until the next semester, after which my involvement would increase significantly. Nonetheless, since it was the first club I ever attended at Penn State—and on the first day of classes at that—it meant a great deal to me and set my expectations for the years to come.
Creating PSU Math 2.0
When I was a freshman, there was a student-run math Discord server with a simple name like "PSU Math." I don't remember exactly what it was called, but this is a good guess, given the name I would go on to choose for its successor. Not much happened in this server, but it was the only general math server and it was used by students for homework help and to discuss mathematics. I remember using it in my second semester to discuss topology and other subjects and, to my surprise, I ended up meeting a professor on the server whom I had met before in real life.
The existence of PSU Math did not last long into my career at the school. On one fateful day, an unknown student posted a screenshot of a quiz, offering to pay real money to have someone help with it. This may not have been malicious in nature, but the student succeeded in pinging everyone in the server, and it looked at first glance like an attempt at academic dishonesty. For this reason, a decision was made that affected the server forever: it was deleted in an instant by its owner.
After the deletion of PSU Math, I saw an opportunity. I and many others still wanted a place to discuss mathematics and offer help for classes, so I created what remains the biggest mathematics Discord server at Penn State: PSU Math 2.0. I remember this server being founded in the summer of 2022, and the oldest message appears to be from September 2022, so this definitely took place near the beginning of the Fall 2022 semester.
After the creation of the new server, things proceeded slowly, and many students (and a professor!) from the original server joined. After these first members, the influx of new members was mostly a slow trickle, and we had a pretty tightly knit community. That was until something that would change the server forever launched it into its current level of popularity.
Merging with the Math Club
At the end of the Spring 2023 semester at Penn State, elections were held for officer positions in the Math Club. I quickly volunteered for the role of Web Master because I had a brilliant plan: give a new digital home to the Math Club, which up to this point had only had GroupMe and no Discord server of its own. At the meeting I announced a plan to integrate discussions, announcements, and officer communications for the Math Club into the PSU Math 2.0 server and was appointed to the position which I had sought.
After the elections, rooms for the club were created in the server and operations were moved into them. This was a big moment for me, as it meant the PSU Math 2.0 server was on track to become something much larger than what I and the other early members had imagined. Not much happened over the summer, but when a QR code linking directly to the server was displayed on the Math Club banner at the Fall 2023 Involvement Fair and at the beginning of every club meeting, membership began to explode.
Over the next two years before I graduated, I continued to serve as the Web Master and watched the club grow phenomenally. The club went from a source of friendship, free pizza, and lectures, to a phenomenon extending beyond the school itself, achieving millions of views on viral videos on the TikTok platform and even receiving comments from the Papa John's account itself. In my junior year, the club participated in and provided pizza for the legendary Nerd Night event with many other nerdy clubs: this is definitely the event I look back on the most fondly from my days in the club. Finally, the club began hosting a Student-Faculty Dinner event at the end of the semester; I went to every one of them, starting with the first experimental event, and strongly pushed for it to be held again. One of my fondest memories from my undergraduate career is eating ice cream at the Berkey Creamery with other members of the club after the Student-Faculty Dinner. Over all, the dinner event was a great success and connected faculty members with students, marking another achievement of the Math Club I saw arise in my time there.
Today the club has over 350 members and is still growing, far surpassing the original expectations I had when I created it. The server is full of familiar names and faces to me, and many of my memories from PSU took place in it, ranging from its very early days when I was the most active member to the year I graduated. I remember hoping in the beginning that it would one day hit 100 members, and now the club sits far above that number, continuing to enrich the lives of every one of its members every day.
Graduating and moving on: passing on the torch
At this point, I am no longer a Penn State student, having graduated in 2025. When I graduated, I gave the server to the new Web Master, leaving its fate in the hands of the officers at the time. Many of these officers I knew personally, as they were a year below me or were staying at PSU for advanced degrees. At this point, however, even these last members of the Old Guard have graduated and moved on, and the team of officers now no longer consists entirely of familiar names. Such is the passing of time.
As I switched to FOSS and decentralized social media earlier this year, I have not used Discord for nearly 6 months, aside from an alt account I use for maintaining a bot. I am no longer a member of the PSU Math 2.0 community. The time has come for me to pass on the torch to future generations of club members who will continue to grow the server into what it can become. It started out as just a replacement for a server that was unfortunately deleted, and over time it has grown into a hub for many hundreds of people to have friendly and productive discussions about mathematics and other topics, mirroring the exceptional growth of the Math Club itself. It is my hope that the future officers continue to preserve this tradition and strive to make it even more of a home for every one of its members.
So why am I writing this? Well, on one hand, I want to express my appreciation for the club and the role it had in my undergraduate life. On the other hand, I want to make sure that the history of the server I created in 2022 will be preserved forever. I hope this essay accomplishes both goals, giving future generations a look at what came 5, 10, and eventually 20+ years before them, while also serving as a personal memorial I can look back on in 5, 10, and 20+ years for my own sake.
The last thing I have to say is: thank you. Thank you to everyone who made my experience as a mathematics undergraduate student at Penn State an amazing 4 years that I continue to look back on fondly today. That extends not only to the Math Club itself, but also to everyone in the Math Department I met and had the pleasure of sharing time and space with. To see specific acknowledgements to faculty members and to the Math Club as a whole, see the Acknowledgements section of my undergraduate thesis.
To those whose paths intersected with mine, as we continue our mathematical journeys through life, I hope that you remember the history we share, through which the Math Club and PSU Math 2.0 Discord server rose to their current glory. To those who are current members of the club and didn't know of this history before reading, I hope that you feel more connected with the club and that you've learned something important about the tradition in which you are participating.
May the growth we see in our futures be as exponential as that of the Math Club and the PSU Math 2.0 Discord server. So long, everyone: may we always remember! 
Links (with music!)
a great song about change and growth
an amazing song about fond memories of times shared together