Infinite Possibilities for Minority Women in Mathematics

Leaders across the country have called for the country to produce more scientists, engineers and mathematicians. Yet, despite the fact that minorities comprise the fastest-growing groups in the country, they are the least represented in science and engineering careers.

In mathematics, the disparity is particularly acute for underrepresented minority women. They account for less than 2 percent of all doctoral degrees awarded in mathematics each year, as well as less than 1 percent of incoming freshman majoring in the field.

“Changing those numbers goes beyond ‘the right thing to do,’” says Freeman Hrabowski, president of UMBC. “Minority women account for a growing proportion of college-ready students. Increasing their representation in mathematics is critical if the United States is to remain competitive on a global scale.”

To that end, on March 30 and 31, UMBC will host the fourth Infinite Possibilities Conference (IPC) for minority women in mathematics and statistics. The conference is designed to promote, educate, encourage and support minority women interested in the mathematical sciences.

“It can be very isolating, and easy to feel that you don’t belong in mathematics,” says Tanya Moore, one of the conference founders. “We wanted to give people an opportunity to see women all over the country just like them.”

Sue Minkoff, the local organizing chair for the conference and an associate professor of mathematics and statistics at UMBC, says the event is designed to connect aspiring and early-career mathematicians with mentors and role models, who can address concerns the women may have about differences between themselves and traditional mathematicians.

“IPC provides students at the high school, undergraduate and graduate levels with opportunities to interact with peers and more established female mathematicians in a supportive and collegial atmosphere,” she says.

Hosting the conference also supports UMBC’s overall mission. “We hope that hosting the conference here at UMBC will help us in our continued efforts to recruit minority women in mathematics and statistics at the faculty, graduate and undergraduate levels,” says Nagaraj Neerchal, professor and chair of UMBC’s department of mathematics and statistics.

Erika Camacho, an assistant professor of mathematics at Arizona State University and a slated speaker, says the conference provides a strong sense of community and belonging that is currently missing for women of color in STEM fields at most places. It allows women to become catalysts of change by supporting each other.

The agenda for the 2012 conference includes keynote speakers, research talks, poster sessions and panel discussions, ranging from advice for graduate studies to navigating paths beyond the degree.

The day before the conference, there will be a short course in mathematical biology, funded by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute collaborative diversity program and organized by the Institute for Math and Its Applications at the University of Minnesota. There will also be a special program for high school students and teachers on Saturday.

(3/29/12)

UMBC sophomores Edward Burroughs III and David H. Murray are making waves in their run for seats on the 8-member Prince George’s County Board of Education.

Burroughs is currently serving his first term on the county board and is also a former student representative for the group. Murray, a Sondheim Scholar, previously served as a student representative on Maryland’s State Board of Education. To learn more about their campaigns, see this week’s TV news segment from WUSA9 and Washington Post story on the Maryland Schools Insider blog.

Patch reports that nearly 60,000 people turned out for early voting in Maryland, March 24-29, but that accounts for just 1.88% of eligible voters statewide. UMBC public policy professor and chair Donald Norris, quoted in the story, suggests these early votes will have little impact on the overall election turnout.

“Virtually nothing improves voting turnout except when people are really, really excited about what’s going on in a campaign,” Norris said. The GOP presidential primary candidates are now trying to energize Republican voters across the state through local speaking appearances.

The American Political Science Association has selected Tyson King-Meadows, associate professor of political science, for the 2012-2013 class of Congressional Fellows.

The APSA Congressional Fellowship Program is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious congressional fellowship. Fellows gain “hands on” experience with the U.S. legislative process by serving as a legislative assistant to a U.S. Representative or a U.S. Senator, or as a staffer on a congressional committee.

King-Meadows will use the yearlong experience on Capitol Hill to augment his teaching and research on the U.S. Congress. He will also lay the groundwork for his new book project examining post-Reconstruction Era efforts by Congress to curtail deceptive election practices and to standardize election procedures.

Many students broadcast their UMBC pride in traditional fashion – on a black and gold t-shirt, hoodie or ball cap. But UMBC seniors Chris Snyder ’12 and Chris Bowie ’12 have taken their case of Retriever Fever one very permanent step further.

“It was my last season of cross country, so I wanted to do something special,” says Snyder, a mechanical engineering major who along with Bowie had the new UMBC retriever logo tattooed on his left calf last spring.

Since its debut in summer 2010, the Retriever logo has spread quickly across the university’s walls and furniture, but never quite so indelibly as this. The inking process – including the addition of traditional cross country wings at the base of the dog – took about half an hour per runner, they said.

“You know, I like this school and I put all four years here into (a sport) I love,” says Bowie, a political science major. “It just made sense to want something permanent from a place that means something to me.”

So far, neither runner regrets the decision (or, at least, admits it). In fact, they both claim to get quite a few compliments. “You know, it might actually become a tradition,” says Bowie. “A lot of the freshmen runners want to get the dog… but they say they want to prove themselves first.”

— Jenny O’Grady

UMBC’s Shriver Center has partnered with College Gardens for 15 years to offer children in Southwest Baltimore tutoring, mentorship and supervised activities after school. This week, WYPR highlighted the hard work of UMBC student volunteers in a news feature on the program, which parents say “provides a safe, academic haven for their children.”

Service-learning intern Brittany Rush ’12, GES, has worked with College Gardens for two years. She tells WYPR’s Gwendolyn Glenn that she came into the program aware of negative stereotypes of Baltimore city youth, but she quickly found that “these kids all do care about their futures and the future of their peers.”

A current University of Baltimore student who participated in the program as a child reflects that it was UMBC student mentors who inspired her to see college as a a real possibility for her life: “I was excited for it because I saw the UMBC kids and I was like, ‘I can’t wait to go to college. I can’t wait until I’m old enough.’”

Kate Brown, associate professor of history, is giving a series of talks that are taking her across the country.  Brown studies and teaches Russian and Eastern European history, and is an expert on the history of nuclear disasters.  Stops along her tour include:

• On February 9, she spoke on “The Plutonium Curtain: Plutonium’s role in making model cities and the nuclear security state during the Soviet-American Cold War” at New York University.
• On April 18, she will give the Sweet Professorship Lecture “Touched: Plutonium’s role in the making of nuclear families and lethal landscapes in the US and USSR” at Michigan State university.
• On May 14, she will give a talk at Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies entitled “Business as Usual: Fukushima in light of the great Cold War plutonium disasters.”
• On May 16, she will discuss “Local Knowledge and the great Soviet and American plutonium disasters” at the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
• On May 17, she will present “Excerpts from ‘Plutopia’” at the University of California, Berkeley, Russian History Circle.

Meredith Oyen, assistant professor of history, will give a talk at the Center for Force and Diplomacy at Temple University on Thursday, March 29.

Oyen’s talk is entitled “Crossing Borders in Sino-American Relations.” Using the stories of Chinese and other migrants and refugees caught in limbo by Cold War politics, she will discuss the role that transnational migration and migrants themselves play in 1950s relations between the People’s Republic of China, Republic of China (on Taiwan), Hong Kong, and the United States

Prior to joining UMBC’s faculty, Oyen was a visiting professor of American Studies at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.

Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American Studies, and Michelle Scott, associate professor of history, were guests on the “Marc Steiner Show” on Monday to discuss the case of Trayvon Martin, a young African American man who was killed by a neighborhood watchman in February.

The conversation turned to the role and perception of black men in society, and Moffitt related the incident to her worries for her own son.

 “There has been a study done that shows that, really interestingly, for young, African-descended boys in this country, around the age of 8 or 9 there’s a shift that happens where we no longer see them as these cute little boys, running around, having fun and enjoying life, but that they then become a threat and seen as a danger to society. So when I think of my 7 year old who is about to turn 8, that becomes a concern as to how people will relate to him,” she said.

Scott related the way black men are seen to the legacy of slavery in America. “You still have the victimized black body, and still that legacy and history, just in the twenty-first century.” She said.

The full interview can be heard here.

Lindsey Loeper ’04, American studies, acknowledges the futility of trying to keep pace with the hands of the watch and the rapidly turning pages of the calendar. No matter how quickly she and other members of the Special Collections team archive the stacks of UMBC documents they receive every day, there are always more coming. History never stops happening at a university that’s still building its story.

“We’re often asked when we’ll have everything digitized and we never will,” smiles Loeper, who earned her master’s of library sciences at College Park. “Instead, we try to create an online record that can lead you back [to the library], into the stacks.”

Already, the cool, darkened aisles contain 250 shelves stacked with nearly 750 linear feet of physical records, all neatly arranged in gray boxes. Add to that the online digital archives – launched in 2008 to make UMBC’s earliest documents, including many issues of The Retriever Weekly, easily available to the public – and you’re talking years and years of history waiting to be explored…

Read the full story, including features on other “Cool Jobs You Didn’t Know Existed at UMBC” in the Winter 2012 of UMBC Magazine.

Web Extra: Lindsey Loeper