New Women in Doctoral Mathematics Departments

[Christina Sormani]

I'd like to keep this google group up to date, so please tell any women you know who have recently

been tenured or started a tenured position in a doctoral math department about this google group.

For those who are new to the group, we are concerned with issues like increasing the numbers

of women in the very top departments, increasing the numbers of women winning prizes in mathematics

and obtaining invitations to speak at the ICM and other top meetings, and issues concerning 

grants and funding.   Although the group is restricted to those who are already tenured in doctoral

math departments, the posts made to this group are publicly visible and may possibly be used to

affect change.  

I am organizing an AWM forum for next January's JMM on the Retention of Women Assistant Professors

in Mathematics.   Here we will be focusing on women in doctoral mathematics departments as these

are the departments with the worst retention rates.   Hopefully we will be able to build advise for those

pursuing tenure as well as for departments which would like to retain more of their women faculty.   Anyone

interested in making suggestions can post ideas here on the womeninmath google group or can email

me personally.   

I believe there has been much progress hiring women in the top math departments in recent years.  I

visited MIT this Spring and the place has completely changed since the 1990's.   However, departments

like my own continue with roughly the same number of women we've had for thirty years.  Our total numbers 

may have gone up because we retain our trail blazing women from 45 years ago, but the numbers of new

women being tenured is not increasing significantly.   In my department the tenured women have PhD's in:

1964, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1996, 1999, and 2004.  Only 3 out of 24 new faculty since 2007 are women, 2 of

them obtaining appointments this year.  I am proud to say that one of our three new women professors is

a Distinguished Professor (Dolciani Professor).   The discussion of promoting women into ranks of distinction

has come up on this google group and I was glad to see my department benefit from such a hire.   But we need

to help more younger women succeed at doctoral institutions rather than just trading the top women from one

department to another.

Sincerely,

Christina

[Jean Taylor]

Hi Christina,

Did you receive an invitation to a salon, from 2:30pm to 4:30 pm this Sunday June 10, entitled "Women and Math: How Far Have We Come?"?  I was invited, along with Amanda Redlich MIT Ph.D. 2010 (now at Rutgers), to be a featured guest. I was also requested to make suggestions of others to be invited, and I mentioned you and Cathleen Morawetz, trying to fill out the spectrum of ages.  I really think you ought to come, so I'm just going to invite you myself if no-one else has. I was contacted about this by the Museum of Mathematics, but the salon is at a private person's home: 

 Sara Menker 43 Wooster St (between Broome & Grand), Apt 4E

I do not know what the connection to MoMath is. I wasn't given any info on Sara Menker, but I googled for her and found   http://www.truthaid.org/2010/03/sara-menker-chair-of-board/ 

She seems to be a black woman,   a Vice President in Morgan Stanley’s Global Commodities Group in the Fixed Income Division... She attended Mount Holyoke College, the London School of Economics, and Columbia University for her undergraduate and graduate studies in Economics, African Studies, and Business Administration. 

 I'll be at a MoMath meeting on Saturday and will tell Cindy then that I've invited you and see how she reacts!

If by any chance you can't come (e.g., if you are busy, or if Cindy tells me I really can't just invite you), then I'd like to quote what you said below.  I may also mine your google group for more info.

Jean

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[Christina Sormani]

Thanks for the invitation, Jean.   I wasn't invited or perhaps the email was lost.   Regretfully I cannot attend last minute but please do feel free to quote anything I've posted on this google group.   Its visible to the public.

I don't believe CUNY is exceptionally bad.   Do you know if Rutgers or U Penn are doing better?    Meanwhile I've heard Princeton has landed a second woman professor by stealing the only woman from Harvard.   That's a more recent startling point.  Of course the men are stolen too but with so few women at these ranks its particularly disturbing.

It does seem top departments want women and men to succeed before hiring them.   Then presuming women are supported enough to succeed in a second teir department like my own (where teaching and service can be variable), who can say which of those women will or will not relocate.    It is sad that we don't see many departments where young spectacular faculty are discovered and nurtured into greatness.   While public universities have served this role in the past, now the service and teaching responsibilities have begun to soar and fewer and fewer departments are even hiring tenure track.   The private universities need to foster their own faculty.

[j...@math.columbia.edu]

Dear Christina,

During the 30 years I was at Barnard-Columbia (I retired in July 2004)
one reason that the math department was able to stay at the top of the
profession was that the administration allowed it to make most of its
senior appointments at the tenure level. That is expensive, but it
eliminates lots of guess work, and makes hiring very strong faculty
substantially easier than a model in which "young spectacular faculty
are discovered and nurtured into greatness". Young spectacular
faculty do not carry signs to identify themselves, and mistakes in
judgement that are made in that process last for many many years.

Even the nurturing process is easier when tenure doesn't necessarily
mean that the candidate keeps his or her office door open every day
for students who wander in for help. The pressures on young people are
very different, in professional environments with different standards.

Finally, having top graduate students can make a huge difference in
one's ability to do top research.

Many people have asked why the top universities had (until very
recently) so few women. The answer is multidimensional, and the
reasons I just gave play a big role. The top universities have been
slow to hire women because there just weren't enough top women to go
around. Fortunately, that picture is changing rapidly, as more and
more women get into the pipeline.

Joan

>> Stanley?s Global Commodities Group in the Fixed Income Division...

[Christina Sormani]

I think Columbia has done very well hiring the likes of Mu-Tao Wang and Melissa Liu as young faculty in recent years. These two are just in my field. I think the department is better than ever and far more welcoming to women as well.

It takes a thoughtful department to discover top young talent. Protecting them from the high teaching and service loads and endless office hours nurtures that talent. So does providing grants departments that assist when writing budgets and staff that file travel reimbursement forms for guests. But perhaps, most important of all, a department can hire young faculty that work well together that can collaborate with senior faculty and postdocs around them.

As for the risk, the risk is not so high when there is always the possibility of turning someone down for tenure. Tenure rates are low in many departments. Top departments can ensure than grants and papers in top journals equals tenure while other departments will often have paper counting and teaching and service. With such requirements interfering with the pursuit of greatness, fewer mathematicians will become great whether they be men or women. Yet somehow if seems in many departments teaching and service demands are higher for women than men in their own departments.