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MAA MathFest 2013 Town Meeting on Goals for Minority Participation in Mathematics

June 28, 2013

The 2013 MAA MathFest in Hartford will include a Town Meeting on Minority Participation in Mathematics on Thursday, August 1 from 4-5 pm.

Twenty-five years ago an MAA Task Force on Minority Participation in Mathematics produced a list of 42 recommendations for how the MAA could help broaden participation in mathematics. This town meeting will feature an open discussion on progress and priorities since the report was issued in 1988 and will culminate with three goals for all of us to take away and work on now as a community.

In preparation for this session and to include feedback from all who cannot attend the meeting, we invite all to start a discussion on this website now. Please email comments for posting to Frank.Morgan@williams.edu.

Comments

I like recommendation 6, more MAA meetings at schools with large minority populations, great for everybody.

—Frank Morgan, Williams College

It was great to see Bill's summary of where we are on the MAA Task Force Recommendations, and it makes the point that many of the recommendations have been taken seriously and that some progress has resulted. A couple of notes:

On the MAA's including at least one minority member on executive-level search committees: For at least the most recent searches for Executive Director and Secretary, this has been done.

On seeking candidates for the top offices: This is one area where the law of unintended consequences may have taken hold, since the MAA's efforts to encourage the nomination of minorities may have backfired a bit: I know for a fact that concern about the very low election rate has discouraged potential underrepresented minority candidates to the extent that some would not accept a nomination.

In the list of Gung and Hu award recipients, Bill omitted the most recent recipient: Bill.

—Robert E. Megginson, University of Michigan

It looks like most of the programs and support available to faculty occur only for faculty at the early stages of their career. However, studies show that women and minorities are vulnerable to lack of mentoring at every stage of their career. Research also shows that women and minorities often take "non-linear" career paths towards math and science. So I think it makes sense to have support, education, and mentoring available for women and minorities at all stages of one's career.

Programs like PREP are great because they are open to everyone, so they bring together faculty at all stages of their career and from different kinds of institutions. These programs are quite short, but if they were longer, I think these could be great places to perhaps incorporate a mentoring component for women and minorities. Continued education is important because I think that there's nothing like learning and doing math that gets mathematicians eager to get more involved in the mathematical community.

—Shirley Yap, California State University, East Bay