or me, diversity means people who have different cultures, different backgrounds, different modes of thought, and different backgrounds, all working together. As a mathematician 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 the past year, I have sought out research projects that directly combat racial and gender inequalities. Last year, I worked with several of my colleagues from Northwestern to develop a model of how women progress through professional hierarchies, where we con- sidered 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. Meanwhile, my current work at Duke is centered on combat- ing partisan gerrymandering, which has been systematically used to silence entire portions of our population.
Even more recently, I have been in contact with several members of the ACLU in my home state of Iowa. They are attempting to present credible evidence of racial bias in traffic citations and arrests to support a number of lawsuits in Des Moines that will hopefully force the city to put in place restrictions on police bias and profiling. 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 still get a uttering stomach whenever I pass a police oficer. I can only begin to imagine how my friends endure this every single day.
Outreach Efforts
While my recent research has been focused on combating racial and gender biases, I have tried to advance the inclusiveness of mathematics 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.
Diversity In The Classroom
Of course, these attempts at promoting communal inclusion in mathematics 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.' I have never heard any student actually make this claim, but I have certainly seen the underlying effects. 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.
Meanwhile, my algorithms class at Duke has provided me with a different sort of inclusivity challenge. Both times I have taught the course, I have 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. This has come with its own set of cultural and linguistic challenges. I have 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 in the current iteration of the course, I have tried to emphasize that I will never grade a student based on their proficiency in English. When I most recently announced that during the lecture devoted to midterm review, there were audible sounds of relief.
Diversity Benefits Everyone
I believe that fostering an inclusive environment is critical to advancing mathematics, 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 the past year, I have sought out research projects that directly combat racial and gender inequalities. Last year, I worked with several of my colleagues from Northwestern to develop a model of how women progress through professional hierarchies, where we con- sidered 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. Meanwhile, my current work at Duke is centered on combat- ing partisan gerrymandering, which has been systematically used to silence entire portions of our population.
Even more recently, I have been in contact with several members of the ACLU in my home state of Iowa. They are attempting to present credible evidence of racial bias in traffic citations and arrests to support a number of lawsuits in Des Moines that will hopefully force the city to put in place restrictions on police bias and profiling. 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 still get a uttering stomach whenever I pass a police oficer. I can only begin to imagine how my friends endure this every single day.
Outreach Efforts
While my recent research has been focused on combating racial and gender biases, I have tried to advance the inclusiveness of mathematics 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.
Diversity In The Classroom
Of course, these attempts at promoting communal inclusion in mathematics 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.' I have never heard any student actually make this claim, but I have certainly seen the underlying effects. 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.
Meanwhile, my algorithms class at Duke has provided me with a different sort of inclusivity challenge. Both times I have taught the course, I have 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. This has come with its own set of cultural and linguistic challenges. I have 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 in the current iteration of the course, I have tried to emphasize that I will never grade a student based on their proficiency in English. When I most recently announced that during the lecture devoted to midterm review, there were audible sounds of relief.
Diversity Benefits Everyone
I believe that fostering an inclusive environment is critical to advancing mathematics, 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.
