Sonia Kovalevsky Mathematics Days
From AWM Newsletter, Vol. 29, No. 2, March-April 1999.
The Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Days below were funded by a grant awarded to AWM by the National Security Agency. Thanks, NSA!
Celebration of Women in Mathematics:
Elizabeth City State
University
The Celebration of Women in Mathematics was held at Elizabeth City State University on Tuesday, October 16, 1998. The event was co-sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Nurturing ECSU Research Talent Program and the NASA Network Resources and Training Site. Girls and teachers from five area schools made up the 240 participants. All received registration packets including a portfolio, drink bottles, notepad and mirrors. All items were imprinted with the Women in Mathematics Logo. AWM and NSA literature was also distributed to all participants. The Celebration consisted of a series of workshops, a career panel, math sprint competition, lunch and a Math on the WWW Scavenger Hunt. Photos from the event can be viewed at http://nia.ecsu.edu/nrts/SoniaK.html.
The career panelists included Dr. Eleanor Jones, mathematics professor at Norfolk State University; Ms. Amy Roderwald, a mathematician with the Na-tional Security Agency; and Dr. Georgia Lawrence, a professor of mathematics at Elizabeth City State University. All girls and their teachers participated in the career panel. Roderwald also conducted a well-attended workshop on cryptography.
The mathematics sprint competition involved nine teams of five girls. First, Second, Third Place and three honorable mention trophies were awarded to winning teams during the awards luncheon.
This year teams of girls and their teachers were invited to conduct workshops. Two workshops resulted: "Integrating Math and Science" and "Using Graphics Calculators." Girls had the opportunity to explore mathematics sites on the Internet during the WWW Math Scavenger Hunt. Another workshop directed girls in exploring the NASA site named "The Women of NASA."
ECSU faculty members Dr. Linda Hayden, Dr. Georgia Lawrence, Dr. Barbara Johnson, and Dr. Jharna Sengupta served as program organizers and workshop leaders. Dr. Loise Sutton, professor emeritus and past chairperson of the Mathematics Department was the special guest.
Messiah College
Angela Hare, Program Coordinator, Messiah College
On Thursday, November 5, 1998, Messiah College, Grantham, PA hosted its third annual Sonia Kovalevsky Day, from 4 to 8 p.m. This was the first year we invited young women to come on a weekday afternoon rather than Saturday, and the change in schedule was very successful. Our attendance increased by a factor of five, rising from 18 students last spring to 90 this fall. We were thrilled to have students and teachers from eleven area schools attend. It was particularly encouraging to have a mix of students from rural, suburban, and urban Harrisburg schools, and we had quite a culturally diverse group as well; approximately one third of the students were Asian, African American, or His-panic, all of which are minority cultures in this area.
To start the afternoon, each student received an insulated lunch bag, carrying the slogan "Mathe-matics Takes You Where You Want To Go." The bag contained registration information, free brochures, pencils, and stickers. Each teacher was given a framed color image of a four-dimensional, complex-valued function to display on their desks at school. We welcomed the girls and introduced them to Sonia Kovalevsky Day by giving each of them a puzzle piece. They mingled and met each other while they found the matching pieces; each of the sixteen puzzles included a tidbit of information about Sonia's life and inspiration.
The girls were divided into two groups to attend the interactive sessions, in which they saw examples of how mathematical principles are used to answer questions and solve problems. In one session, the girls saw Messiah College's solar-powered car, Genesis, built and driven in competition by an undergraduate student team every two years. A female engineering student described how the car is modeled and constructed and answered the girls' questions about the competition. In the second session, two mathematics majors led the girls in an experiment with animal crackers, simulating how the "capture/recapture" method is used to predict the population size of a species in the wild.
All participants had dinner in a caf‚ on campus, and many of the girls took advantage of dorm tours offered by several Messiah students. Dinner was a good time for our college students to talk with the girls and for teachers and students to talk informally. After the meal, the students took part in a problem-solving contest while teachers and other adults met and discussed ideas for future programs.
The final event was a panel discussion in which four women from local industry and one from NSA described their careers and education. There were a variety of experiences represented in the panel, including computer science, engineering, statistics, and mathematics careers. The girls had many questions for the panelists, and several commented on the surprising things they learned.
I am very grateful for the support of the AWM and NSA which makes Sonia Kovalevsky Day possible and allows me to build on the educational connections these days establish. The girls and teachers have expressed a particular interest in interactive activities in physics and engineering. I plan to work with engineering and physics faculty this spring to develop ideas for a program next fall which can give the girls concrete experiences to build on their intuition in these areas.
North Carolina A&T
Alexandra Kurepa, North Carolina A&T
The North Carolina A&T Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day took place on Thursday, September 17, 1998. About 150 participants from high schools in the Greensboro/High Point/Winston Salem area participated in the event.
After registration the morning session started with some opening
remarks by Alexandra Kurepa of NCA&T about the background and the history
of Sonia Kovalevsky Day which was followed by a talk, "Who was Sonia
Kovalevsky?" given by Giles Warrack of NCA&T. The students were noticeably
impressed by the importance of her work. Our principal speaker was former AWM
President Rhonda Hughes from Bryn Mawr College, who gave the talk "How
Mathematics Can Improve Your Image." Rhonda shared some of her experiences and
did a superb job of exposing students to concepts such as Fourier series and
wavelets in an informative and elementary way. The students enjoyed her
lecture. After a short break sessions started. Students had a choice of two
workshops: "Mathematics on the Web" (conducted by M. Chen and G. Gibson
of
NCA&T) or "Problems and Solutions" (D. Clemence and A. Issa of NCA&T).
In the meantime the teachers met in a workshop given by Ellen Kirkman of Wake
Forest University, "Preparing Women for Careers in Mathematics and the
Sciences." The workshop was a lively exchange of ideas and experiences
regarding mentoring, guiding students towards research and informing them of
careers available for mathematicians. Students and teachers were given a copy
of Careers that Count, an AWM publication featuring careers in mathematics. The
booklet was well-received.
After lunch, a one-hour workshop for all participants was given by Madonna Chernesky from NSA, a mathematician who is out in the "real world" doing what the students consider "fun things." The workshop, "Be A Cryptanalyst: Solve a Cipher System," required student participation. It was very informative and entertaining so the students gave it high marks on the evaluation forms. A number of them gathered around Ms. Chernesky wanting to get more information on how one becomes a cryptanalyst. They also seemed surprised to learn of the high number of mathematicians employed by the NSA. The program ended by 2:30 to allow students to get back to their schools before the end of the school day and take the buses home.
As an organizer it was very rewarding to have been able to offer a program that has attracted so many participants and to look up in the auditorium and see a room full of young women who have an interest in and the capability to do mathematics.
North Dakota State University
Ken Johnson, North Dakota State University
The Sonia Kovalevsky High School Day was held on Saturday, October 17, 1998. The event was sponsored by AWM and the NDSU College of Science and Mathematics. Thirty-two students and three teachers from the area participated in the event. One reservation high school sent five students and two teachers to our event; these participants drove more than six hours to attend. We were able to provide lodging for one night to help with their expenses. This kind of effort underlines the need for events such as ours in a rural state. Additionally, several NDSU students, some from our classes and some from the NDSU Science Bound Project, attended the program. These students aided in the workshops and served as mentors for the high school students.
Following a continental breakfast everyone was welcomed by Dean McCaul of the NDSU College of Science and Mathematics. Each participant received a notebook, pen and a program for the day. Dr. Rodica Simion of George Washington University presented a talk on partitions of the integers. The students enthusiastically enjoyed the talk.
After the keynote address the students and teachers participated in two workshops: one involving three famous problems from Greek geometry and the other about tiling the plane using polyominoes.
Participants were treated to a sandwich bar lunch in the Family Life Center at NDSU where students, teachers, visitors, and faculty interacted, discussing, among other things, mathematics in college and career opportunities in mathematics.
Immediately after lunch we presented a career panel for the students. The participants included Rodica Simion (George Washington University mathematics professor), Elizabeth Mossberg (NSA analyst), Deb Battles (Norwest Financial Investment Broker), Lisa Nolan (veterinarian and NDSU microbiology professor), and Linda Vik (NDSU mathematics graduate, now a graduate student in Business Administration at NDSU). This was probably the highlight of the program as the participants explained the kinds of work that they perform and how mathematics has helped them achieve their career objectives. The questions asked by the students indicated that they were both enjoying and benefiting from the presentations.
Following the career panel students took part in two of the three additional workshops we presented, Regular Solids, The Apportionment Problem and Ramsey Theory. At the end of a long but enjoyable day, each of the participants received a copy of the John Allen Paulos' book Innumeracy and a copy of AWM's Careers That Count. The MAA book She Does Math! is being shipped as a gift to participating schools since it arrived too late for the program.
From the organizer's point of view, we were extremely happy with the day. Participation was nearly double that of our first event, although we were somewhat disappointed in participation by teachers. We had substantially better coverage by the local media than last year. There was a TV interview, a radio interview, and an article in the local paper (which did not print the article we sent them last year). This media coverage resulted in inquiries from several girls who attended without their teachers. This year we were also able to have a web page for our event which allowed students to look into the program and get their questions answered on-line. The address for the page is http://panda.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/~skday/.
Participants were mailed a follow-up questionnaire. Judging by the responses we have received so far the participants greatly enjoyed and profited from the event. We are hoping that the inclusion of local business people in our career panel can be expanded in the future and that their participation may ultimately result in financial contributions for future events.
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