or me, diversity means people who have different cultures, different backgrounds, different modes of thought, and different backgrounds, all working together. As a mathematician, computer scientist, and an educator, my ideal is to work in, and help create, a diverse and inclusive environment that allows for a group of differing humans to share ideas freely, and to create solutions together, to help further our society and science.
Research Addressed To Diversity Issues
Over recent years, I have sought out research projects that directly combat racial and gender inequalities. While at Duke, and continuing through my time at Grinnell, I have worked in collaboration with the Quantifying Gerrymandering group at Duke, led by Jonathan Mattingly, PhD. The long-term goal of this group is to develop ‘the ensemble method for outlier analysis,’ which is used to generate a representative sample of non-partisan maps from a distribution on redistricting. These samples are then used as a comparison against potentially partisan proposals. This method is a key tool in combating gerrymandering, which has been systematically used to silence entire portions of our population.
Previously, I worked with several of my colleagues from Northwestern to develop a model of how women progress through professional hierarchies, where we considered a balance between employer bias in hiring, and homophilic tendencies in employee applications for promotion. We then fit this model to actual data of women progressing through a variety of academic fields, to help guide efforts to increase the participation of women in some of these fields.
At Grinnell, I have worked closely with partners in Iowa advocacy groups who have collected data on traffic citations, arrests, and dismissed cases in the capital city Des Moines. Using this comprehensive traffic citation, warning, and arrest data from the Iowa Department of Transportation and the Des Moines Police Department, we highlight the effects of race on traffic stops and policing behavior. This is an issue that is very close to my heart. Growing up in a suburb of Des Moines, I had a number of friends who were, and still are, affected by these biased traffic stops on a regular basis. I myself have even been stopped on dozens of occasions when I had these specific friends with me in the car. Even now, I can still get an upset stomach when I drive past a police officer. I can only begin to imagine how my friends endure this every single day.
A new direction for my work in social justice research is examining the fairness of jury composition. A fundamental aspect of the United States' judicial system is the right to a fair and impartial trial by a jury of one’s peers. This means, in particular, that citizens should not be systemically excluded from juries based on race. But for a defendant to argue a fair cross-section claim, they must present evidence that a distinctive group is being excluded from the jury selection process - and this is where the academic can make a difference. My ultimate goal for this future project is to create a ‘road-map’ – a document to help guide advocates through this process of data collection, analysis, and reporting – and prepare it for wide dissemination through my connections in the Iowa/Nebraska NAACP. It is my hope that such attempts to make sure that our government is fair to everyone will advance the goal of assuring that all persons are, and can see that they are, full and equal participants in our society.
Outreach Efforts
While my recent research has been focused on combating racial and gender biases, I have tried to advance the inclusiveness of mathematics and computer science in the community through a number of outreach and mentorship activities. During my time at Northwestern, the applied math department hosted a number of Applied Math in Action presentations aimed at high school students from typically underrepresented backgrounds. We would work directly with teachers at several local high schools to set up events where graduate students could meet with the students and provide fun presentations and activities involving a variety of mathematical topics.
I believe that these kinds of outreach activities are critically important to increasing diversity in mathematics, because we were able to create a memorable experience for these children centered on how fun math can be. And we were able to do this for children who would not normally have had this kind of opportunity. I remember that for one of the events, we had to travel to the south side of Chicago to give our presentations immediately after school ended for the day. This was the only timing that could work, because the students could not stay after dark due to safety concerns. It was particularly rewarding to see how excited those students were just to stay after school to talk about some math.
While at Grinnell, I took the initiative to reach out to the schools in the nearby city of Des Moines and to present materials at those high schools with a higher percentage of students from typically underrepresented backgrounds. My goal was to promote Grinnell in particular, but also to get those young students of color thinking that they are exactly the students that higher education needs right now. I have even connected with teachers in those schools who have classes dedicated to local policing practices - one of my research projects. One of these classes then showed up when my Grinnell students presented their findings at the Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities. My students doing the presentation were both women of color, as were many of those young students watching. It was an obvious point of pride and satisfaction to my students that they were able to "pay it forward" and themselves become role models to the young female scholars-to-be in attendance.
Diversity In The Classroom
Of course, these attempts at promoting communal inclusion in mathematics and computer science would mean very little if they were not also supported by inclusivity in our classrooms. An important step in this direction is to ensure that we use inclusive language in our lectures, where the `people' in the examples we use are either gender/racially neutral or are diverse. I think that even these small changes can have a profound effect on students. I remember there was a lecture in my second week of college where the professor was describing a random walk. In my head, the `person' being described was, essentially, me. Until the professor used the pronoun `she' when describing how this person could step randomly to the right or left. This was the first time in my life when a classroom example was someone other than myself, and it has clearly left a lasting impression. When I reflect on this memory, I think of what the women in my class experienced. Perhaps this was the first time they had ever encountered an example `person' who was like them.
Along with using inclusive language in my lectures and course materials, I have found that it is sometimes necessary to take a more direct approach. In particular, I think that directness is sometimes required when combating the stereotype that `woman are bad at math.' In the first course I ever taught myself, a summer linear algebra class, I had a female student in my class who was struggling with the material. She put in a lot of effort and would always show up for office hours, and I struggled to understand why her performance was suffering. It suddenly became clear to me when, one day in office hours, she made a small mistake while we were working through a problem. When I had pointed out the mistake, she actually apologized to me for being stupid. In that moment, I saw her past struggles for what they were: a lack of confidence in her own (often correct) mathematical intuition. Once I had realized this, I changed my approach with her. I stopped giving any hints, and instead forced her to indicate what her intuition was saying. I focused on providing positive feedback, pointing out when her intuition was spot on, and gently reprimanding her whenever she tried to apologize for a mistake. This approach seemed to work, because she not only aced the final, but outperformed the entire class.
Another example occurred at Grinnell, when I had a different issue on the other side of the spectrum. A Chinese woman would attend my office hours for algorithms. She was quiet and shy, but clearly understood the material quite well. She would consistently get answers correct, but even then, she would phrase her answers as questions, seeking validation and approval. In those settings, I would tend to sit quietly and listen carefully and attentively as she spoke. When it was time, I would respond warmly with a kind and gentle smile, compliment her when appropriate (though not overly much so as to ensure I was always sincere), and encourage her to be correct as she often was. She responded well to this and would always leave office hours with a large smile on her face. I don't think she learned much in those interactions, since she already knew most of the material after all. But what she needed was some extra time spent getting that validation and encouragement. And I was always willing to give her that time.
Meanwhile, my algorithms class at Duke provided me with a different sort of inclusivity challenge. Every time I taught the course, I had over a hundred Chinese nationals in class, many of whom had arrived for their first time in our country just a couple weeks before the semester started. I had met a number of students who expressed concern that their difficulties with speaking English could result in a lowered grade. I certainly do not want those worries to affect their ability to learn, so I explicitly emphasized that I will never grade a student based on their proficiency in English.
Classroom inclusivity must be concerned with how different cultures, different backgrounds, and various types of neurodiversity can affect learning. Across the years, I have taught hundreds of students from China, India, and other countries around the world. And consistently in my courses, about half of the students are women. I have taught students from many different religious backgrounds, and students with various disabilities. I make an effort in my course design to create a flexible and receptive environment for my students, where I and the course have the ability to adapt and provide for each students’ particular situation. I have flexible course policies while still maintaining expected responsibilities; I conduct classes using various formats (lectures, small and large scale activities, think-pair-share, interview days, and more) to give students multiple avenues to engage with the concepts; I hold many one-on-one office hours where I work to both guide students as they work on assignments, but also work to get to know the individual students and how they respond to different ideas and approaches. There is, in my opinion, no better way to encourage students and make them feel included than through personal attention and individualized support.
Diversity Benefits Everyone
I believe that fostering an inclusive environment is critical to advancing mathematics and computer science, because we as students and educators all bring with us our diverse backgrounds. These backgrounds can lead to unique insights, but this can only happen if that diverse population is included as part of the discussion. I am working to further this goal through my research, teaching, and outreach activities.
Research Addressed To Diversity Issues
Over recent years, I have sought out research projects that directly combat racial and gender inequalities. While at Duke, and continuing through my time at Grinnell, I have worked in collaboration with the Quantifying Gerrymandering group at Duke, led by Jonathan Mattingly, PhD. The long-term goal of this group is to develop ‘the ensemble method for outlier analysis,’ which is used to generate a representative sample of non-partisan maps from a distribution on redistricting. These samples are then used as a comparison against potentially partisan proposals. This method is a key tool in combating gerrymandering, which has been systematically used to silence entire portions of our population.
Previously, I worked with several of my colleagues from Northwestern to develop a model of how women progress through professional hierarchies, where we considered a balance between employer bias in hiring, and homophilic tendencies in employee applications for promotion. We then fit this model to actual data of women progressing through a variety of academic fields, to help guide efforts to increase the participation of women in some of these fields.
At Grinnell, I have worked closely with partners in Iowa advocacy groups who have collected data on traffic citations, arrests, and dismissed cases in the capital city Des Moines. Using this comprehensive traffic citation, warning, and arrest data from the Iowa Department of Transportation and the Des Moines Police Department, we highlight the effects of race on traffic stops and policing behavior. This is an issue that is very close to my heart. Growing up in a suburb of Des Moines, I had a number of friends who were, and still are, affected by these biased traffic stops on a regular basis. I myself have even been stopped on dozens of occasions when I had these specific friends with me in the car. Even now, I can still get an upset stomach when I drive past a police officer. I can only begin to imagine how my friends endure this every single day.
A new direction for my work in social justice research is examining the fairness of jury composition. A fundamental aspect of the United States' judicial system is the right to a fair and impartial trial by a jury of one’s peers. This means, in particular, that citizens should not be systemically excluded from juries based on race. But for a defendant to argue a fair cross-section claim, they must present evidence that a distinctive group is being excluded from the jury selection process - and this is where the academic can make a difference. My ultimate goal for this future project is to create a ‘road-map’ – a document to help guide advocates through this process of data collection, analysis, and reporting – and prepare it for wide dissemination through my connections in the Iowa/Nebraska NAACP. It is my hope that such attempts to make sure that our government is fair to everyone will advance the goal of assuring that all persons are, and can see that they are, full and equal participants in our society.
Outreach Efforts
While my recent research has been focused on combating racial and gender biases, I have tried to advance the inclusiveness of mathematics and computer science in the community through a number of outreach and mentorship activities. During my time at Northwestern, the applied math department hosted a number of Applied Math in Action presentations aimed at high school students from typically underrepresented backgrounds. We would work directly with teachers at several local high schools to set up events where graduate students could meet with the students and provide fun presentations and activities involving a variety of mathematical topics.
I believe that these kinds of outreach activities are critically important to increasing diversity in mathematics, because we were able to create a memorable experience for these children centered on how fun math can be. And we were able to do this for children who would not normally have had this kind of opportunity. I remember that for one of the events, we had to travel to the south side of Chicago to give our presentations immediately after school ended for the day. This was the only timing that could work, because the students could not stay after dark due to safety concerns. It was particularly rewarding to see how excited those students were just to stay after school to talk about some math.
While at Grinnell, I took the initiative to reach out to the schools in the nearby city of Des Moines and to present materials at those high schools with a higher percentage of students from typically underrepresented backgrounds. My goal was to promote Grinnell in particular, but also to get those young students of color thinking that they are exactly the students that higher education needs right now. I have even connected with teachers in those schools who have classes dedicated to local policing practices - one of my research projects. One of these classes then showed up when my Grinnell students presented their findings at the Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities. My students doing the presentation were both women of color, as were many of those young students watching. It was an obvious point of pride and satisfaction to my students that they were able to "pay it forward" and themselves become role models to the young female scholars-to-be in attendance.
Diversity In The Classroom
Of course, these attempts at promoting communal inclusion in mathematics and computer science would mean very little if they were not also supported by inclusivity in our classrooms. An important step in this direction is to ensure that we use inclusive language in our lectures, where the `people' in the examples we use are either gender/racially neutral or are diverse. I think that even these small changes can have a profound effect on students. I remember there was a lecture in my second week of college where the professor was describing a random walk. In my head, the `person' being described was, essentially, me. Until the professor used the pronoun `she' when describing how this person could step randomly to the right or left. This was the first time in my life when a classroom example was someone other than myself, and it has clearly left a lasting impression. When I reflect on this memory, I think of what the women in my class experienced. Perhaps this was the first time they had ever encountered an example `person' who was like them.
Along with using inclusive language in my lectures and course materials, I have found that it is sometimes necessary to take a more direct approach. In particular, I think that directness is sometimes required when combating the stereotype that `woman are bad at math.' In the first course I ever taught myself, a summer linear algebra class, I had a female student in my class who was struggling with the material. She put in a lot of effort and would always show up for office hours, and I struggled to understand why her performance was suffering. It suddenly became clear to me when, one day in office hours, she made a small mistake while we were working through a problem. When I had pointed out the mistake, she actually apologized to me for being stupid. In that moment, I saw her past struggles for what they were: a lack of confidence in her own (often correct) mathematical intuition. Once I had realized this, I changed my approach with her. I stopped giving any hints, and instead forced her to indicate what her intuition was saying. I focused on providing positive feedback, pointing out when her intuition was spot on, and gently reprimanding her whenever she tried to apologize for a mistake. This approach seemed to work, because she not only aced the final, but outperformed the entire class.
Another example occurred at Grinnell, when I had a different issue on the other side of the spectrum. A Chinese woman would attend my office hours for algorithms. She was quiet and shy, but clearly understood the material quite well. She would consistently get answers correct, but even then, she would phrase her answers as questions, seeking validation and approval. In those settings, I would tend to sit quietly and listen carefully and attentively as she spoke. When it was time, I would respond warmly with a kind and gentle smile, compliment her when appropriate (though not overly much so as to ensure I was always sincere), and encourage her to be correct as she often was. She responded well to this and would always leave office hours with a large smile on her face. I don't think she learned much in those interactions, since she already knew most of the material after all. But what she needed was some extra time spent getting that validation and encouragement. And I was always willing to give her that time.
Meanwhile, my algorithms class at Duke provided me with a different sort of inclusivity challenge. Every time I taught the course, I had over a hundred Chinese nationals in class, many of whom had arrived for their first time in our country just a couple weeks before the semester started. I had met a number of students who expressed concern that their difficulties with speaking English could result in a lowered grade. I certainly do not want those worries to affect their ability to learn, so I explicitly emphasized that I will never grade a student based on their proficiency in English.
Classroom inclusivity must be concerned with how different cultures, different backgrounds, and various types of neurodiversity can affect learning. Across the years, I have taught hundreds of students from China, India, and other countries around the world. And consistently in my courses, about half of the students are women. I have taught students from many different religious backgrounds, and students with various disabilities. I make an effort in my course design to create a flexible and receptive environment for my students, where I and the course have the ability to adapt and provide for each students’ particular situation. I have flexible course policies while still maintaining expected responsibilities; I conduct classes using various formats (lectures, small and large scale activities, think-pair-share, interview days, and more) to give students multiple avenues to engage with the concepts; I hold many one-on-one office hours where I work to both guide students as they work on assignments, but also work to get to know the individual students and how they respond to different ideas and approaches. There is, in my opinion, no better way to encourage students and make them feel included than through personal attention and individualized support.
Diversity Benefits Everyone
I believe that fostering an inclusive environment is critical to advancing mathematics and computer science, because we as students and educators all bring with us our diverse backgrounds. These backgrounds can lead to unique insights, but this can only happen if that diverse population is included as part of the discussion. I am working to further this goal through my research, teaching, and outreach activities.
