Janet Beery, Sarah Greenwald, and Cathy Kessel are editing a book, Association for Women in Mathematics: The First Fifty Years, which will be part of the AWM Springer series and is intended to help celebrate AWM’s fiftieth anniversary in 2021. Our chapter has been invited and decided to participate in this project by contributing an article to the book about our award-winning chapter. We’ve invited responses from the current and former executive board as well as our chapter’s faculty advisor to answer the following questions: what AWM has meant to you, what led to your participation in your chapter, and to the activities that resulted in the award? What do you think AWM is doing right—or wrong? What do you think its focus should be in the future?
Our chapter has been actively promoting our activities via Instagram. We have found this is a great way to promote our chapter, engage the community, and keep a record of our activities. We are looking to branch out to other platforms as well as our chapter continues to grow and develop. Our social media has also made incredible opportunities to further connect with other student chapters. Check out our Instagram here!
Hakuna My-Taco Tuesday and Movie Nights – Summer 2020Over the summer, our chapter facilitated Taco Tuesdays (bring your own fillings) and Tuesday matinee movie nights for family-friendly movies. We had several of these events over the summer which was a great opportunity to socialize outside of the university setting. This introduced new students to our chapter – including high schoolers who would attend future events.
Secrets of the Surface – May 15, 2020In collaboration with our graduate student AMS and SIAM chapters, we hosted a free screening of Secrets of the Surface, a documentary on the life of Maryam Mirzakhani. We had a great turnout and our model of activity is inspiring other chapters in quarantine. The documentary was quite inspiring and we were able to obtain support to purchase a DVD so that we will be able to show this film as a chapter. What is wonderful about the film are the discussions that it inspires. We have an accompanying discussion guide that we aim to use to facilitate discussion in future meetings.
Dare to BEE, Care to BEE: March 2020 – OngoingIn addition to the Advanced Graduate Ambassadorship, the chapter was also awarded a Graduate Ambassadorship to build a support structure for undergraduate math majors at our university. The amount of the award was $500. Our original intent was to plan a follow-up mini-conference after FWIMD 2020 where we would invite participants and others to join us for a talk and refreshments. This was deemed untenable by the pandemic and social distancing protocols. We held strategic meetings and discussed ways we could continue to support our community while making safety a priority. We reallocated our budget to purchase reusable masks and blue-light filtering glass with our Dare to BEE logo. We called this our “Care To BEE” initiative and began hosting virtual events to advance our initiative.
Florida Women in Mathematics Day (FWIMD) – February 1, 2020Our student chapter was selected to receive an Advanced Graduate Ambassadorship from the Women and Mathematics Program (WAM) at the Institute for Advanced Study made possible with the generous financial support of Lisa Simonyi. Together with contributions from the FAU Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science Office of the Dean, we received $4,000 to fund the second annual Florida Women in Mathematics Day and follow-up activities. FWD is a one-day conference designed to promote women in mathematics, including a half-day immersion experience for girls interested in mathematics. This year’s theme was mathematics and dance. The conference featured research talks, Dr. Nancy Scherich as a keynote speaker (winner of 2017’s Dance your Ph.D.), networking opportunities, mentoring across all levels, a career panel, and hands-on math and dance activity. The funds were used to reimburse travel and lodging for female mathematicians in the region and the keynote speaker, for promotional items, and refreshments for the participants. With the remaining funds, we were able to support our mentoring initiative, Dare to BEE, and to cultivate relationships with local high schools and others in the mathematical community.
Young CryptograpHers Cyber camp 2019– July 29 – August 2, 2019The first Young CryptograpHers Cybersecurity Summer Camp took place at FAU’s Boca Raton campus on July 29 to August 2, 2019. The camp featured 46 enthusiastic girls from local high schools, spanning Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Director Edoardo Persichetti, together with colleagues Rainer Steinwandt and Shi Bai, coordinated a week revolving around the world of Post-Quantum Cryptography. This included lectures, on-hand coding ac=vi=es, and guest presentations by FAU alumnae Angela Robinson (NIST) and Olivia Fernandez (SRT Group), as well as former NSA executive Margaret Salter. Several of our board members, Tran Ngo and Catherine Berrouet were also key volunteers in the event. Angela, Olivia, Tran, and Catherine are all current/former officers of our AWM FAU Chapter.
MAA MathFest – August 1-3, 2019For the second year in a row, our chapter was represented at MAA MathFest to receive the AWM Student Chapter Award in Fundraising and Sustainability. The trip was funded by support from our mathematics department.
Our first Care to BEE event was a Webinar + Q&A with Dr. Nina Fefferman. We had a group viewing of a pre-recorded webinar, “The role of applied math in realtime pandemic response: How basic disease models work” (NiMBioS). This was followed by a live problem-solving session with Dr. Fefferman.
Our chapter has hosted several tea socials that provide an opportunity for students and faculty to gather and share their favorite teas (or coffee). Inspired by the success of these informal socials, our chapter is hosting an “after-school tea” party where we will also invite the high school students who attended FWIMD back to FAU. These =mes are becoming staples in the department and great forums to discuss issues facing women in mathematics. Our customized teacups and tea party favors with honey (reflecting our Dare to BEE theme) are quite popular
