Meeting Minutes

• Professor Lecture Series with Professor Li next week!
  • Tuesday, February 27, 4-5pm (hosted by AWM)
  • Thursday, February 29, 1-2pm (hosted by math club)
• Pioneer High School Women in STEM club (next quarter?)
• Davis High School STEM Fair in April
• PhD & Graduate Welcome event, March 8
• Looked into SK days for middle/ high schoolers
  • https://awm-math.org/programs/sk-days/
• Next Professor Lecture Series in early March

• Planned for two lecture series for winter quarter
• Looked into connecting with local high schools for outreach with STEM/ math clubs
• Discussed merch/ t-shirt ideas

• We created and sent out t-shirt designs.
• Lecture series with Professor Starkston was a success!
• Posted flyers around campus for publicity.

• Picnic Day booth
• Math department end of year banquet
• Collaboration with University of Reno AWM
• Second lecture series

• Thursday 1/19, 4:30 p.m.
• Wednesday 1/25, 5:30 p.m.
• Thursday 2/02, 4:30 p.m.
• Wednesday 2/08, 5:30 p.m.
• Thursday 2/16, 4:30 p.m.
• Wednesday 2/22, 5:30 p.m.
• Thursday 3/02, 4:30 p.m.
• Wednesday 3/08, 5:30 p.m.
• Thursday 3/16, 4:30 p.m.

• Partner Lecture Series with Math Club
  • Professor Starkston on February 22nd at 3pm
• Publicity - New shirts and flyers this quarter
• University of Reno
  • Ideas for collaboration: Graduate student panel, social in Tahoe, visiting

• Career Focused Activity
• Picnic Day
• Stem Fair
• Math department end of year Banquet

• Upcoming Meetings: Oct.28, Nov.4, Nov. 18

• Communications and Workshop Chair: Communication with other clubs for event planning, send out check in reminders for each meeting, and begin coordinating with University of Reno AWM.
• Secretary: Create a schedule and plan for each meeting.
• Publicity Manager: Create an instagram.

• Posting flyers around campus for the club.
• Some sort of social for Nov.4 with math club!
• Walk around door to door of grad students and hand out small flyers and talk about the club next week.
• Merch! Send design ideas in the discord and post in design ideas folder in google drive.
• Davis High school: currently sending out an invitation to work with us - maybe starting with college student panel as first event.

• President: Himshikha Nath
• Vice President: Alyssa Pham
• Secretary: Zoey Flaminio
• Publicity Manager: Alyssah Harnden
• Communications and Workshop Chair: Ruxandra Tico
• Treasurer: Genesis Navarro
• Undergraduate Chair: Selah Cluff

- Publicity: Ideas to create merch, flyers, and an instagram to spread club awareness

- Upcoming ideas for events: Events with Davis High School, graduate student social, ESTEEM partnership with AWM to work with middle schoolers.

- Election next meeting! Sign up or just show up next meeting with a short introduction and statement to be an officer of AWM.

- Social with grad students and faculty to meet more women in math and encourage more graduate students to join!

- Potential new officer position: Graduate Chair

- Meeting Time: Currently going week by week through a when-to-meet posted on discord, but hope to lock down a definitive spot for future meetings.

Brainstorm Ideas for the panel of women in math at Davis Senior high school on Friday, February 25th and Friday, March 4th. Ideas can be found on this shared document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1azsWh4T426V55tFLBtqCAB1TKK6aOIF-Rw1e7cSuRcI/edit?usp=sharing

- General meeting every other week switching between Thursdays from 4:30-5:30pm and Fridays 4:00-5:00pm

- Google document that shows current and future ideas. Please add to it if you have any ideas for the club! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UDqDPnBz5qNQ_9-gogOXJbK4LT16LIDDRURMfq0BM04/edit?usp=sharing

- Work with Pioneer High school: panel of undergraduates - Want to plan another social to start Winter Quarter!

-Pioneer High School: Possible panel of AWM members and possibly Math Club members

-Graduate student panel for AWM members

-Movie Night: Potentially Friday, November 19th, 2021.

- Introductions were made and election process started - Election of officers run by AWM chapter faculty adviser Monica Vazirani

• President: Himshikha Nath
• Vice President: Alyssa Phan
• Secretary: Zoey Flaminio
• Treasurer: Faith Xiong
• Undergraduate Chair: Vaishnavi Kulkarni
• Communications and Workshop Chair: Ruxandra Tico

• Background and founding of AWM
• Join AWM mailing list found on the website, as well as the general AWM discord for announcements
• Also get National AWM membership

• Elections will be held at the next general meeting.
• Fill out this form to run for a position
• Summary of positions and duties are on the AWM website.

• Social events, such as in-person game nights or crafting get-togethers
• Having a mentor/mentee event to connect undergrads to grads or faculty and grad students to faculty. One social event could be dedicated to this. If there is no interest in this this year, we could just leave it as normal social events and have informal mentoring. Poll to find out interest
• Speakers: members can contact leadership if they have a particular speaker they would like to bring in
• Panels: Depending on interest, we could have panelists for discussion of matters in applying to graduate school (for undergrad members) or jobs, or other such panels
• Working with local high school to bring in speakers from women in math
• Any other events you're interested in! Bring up in discord and/or put it into action yourself.

• Purpose of full group meeting: keep members engaged and part of the AWM community and to get volunteers for events
• Talk about each of events and then send out survey for volunteers and interest
• Frances Marie will make flyer for meeting

• Frances and Himshikha

• Brittany
• 2-3 speakers in weeks 7-8

• Alyssa, Akshita, Sara
• Friday of week 5
• Short speaker and then practice interviews
• zoom registration when announced to gauge number of participants

• week 9
• Frances Marie

-It was decided there would be a full group meeting at the beginning of Spring quarter in order to get eager volunteers.

- Volunteer events with schools

• Officers involved: Frances Quynn, Himshikha Nath
• Frances Quynn has been in touch to organize this with Woodland High School to start in spring quarter
• Volunteers needed: women in STEM careers, grad students

- Partnership (with math club) among undergrads

• Matching math students with students in other fields with similar interests to do projects and/or readings together

- Guest Speaker Series - Math Slam - A real analysis room (like calc room) for 127ABC

• Officers involved: Akshita Sharma, Brittany Leathers
• Maybe 1 day a week to start
• For Spring, Professors: 127A Rohit Thomas, 127B Martin & Bremer, 127 C Kuperburg
• Current TAs for the classes (as possibly some of their office hour duties or as volunteers)
• Volunteers from grad students and senior undergrads (likely from AWM membership)
• Also, encourage peer-to-peer help
• Different rooms for A,B,C or make the meetings go C,B,A in same room to encourage people to stay and help the lower students
• Another possibility for future years: give LAships to senior undergrads to do this
• Zoom ; breakout rooms?

- Grad student panel for those nearing end of undergrad - Workshops for technical skills: python, github, latex (maybe in early fall because of timing) - Career Fair Prep events -need more prep time to do most of these

• on the spot interview practice
• companies to go to for math
• critical thinking interview

- Movie night - Game night

• Officers involved: Francess Bollozos, Sarah Portnell
• winter quarter as a final study break type thing

- A crafting type thing next year

• can make projects(like shapes) to use in teaching and also just to have fun

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Link to slides from the meeting: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PlCbWz0GOsM2kR8-DEiipGWiLcvKkA4tp4GnOrjj5Qo/edit#slide=id.p

- Roles of officers were discussed and election process started - Election of officers run by AWM chapter faculty adviser Monica Vazirani

• President: Akshita Sharma was re-elected as chapter president
• VP: candidates were Brittnay Leathers and Himshikha Nath. Vote was won by Himshika.
• Treasurer and Secretary were discussed next. Brittany Leathers and Sarah Elizabeth Portnell are the two candidates for treasurer and secretary.
• Brittany was elected as secretary
• Sarah elected as treasurer
• Secretary and treasurer will fill in for each other when necessary
• Communications and Workshop Management chairs were discussed next
• Frances Bollozos: Elected as for Math events leader
• Frances Quynn: Elected as Communications and Workshop Chair.
• Together Frances Quynn and Frances Bollozos will help lead social events
• Frances Quynn additionally expressed interest in the professional development events leader
• Undergraduate chair was discussed next
• Alyssa Phan was elected as undergraduate chair.

• Discord was voted as the preferred platform.
• Meeting ended at 7:37 PM

Additional topics to consider:

• Who is in charge of the AWM-exec email address? Who should the emails be forwarded to?
• Who should be in charge of maintaining the AWM wiki-page? Could be an officer or another volunteer. Will be discussed among the officers.
• Communicate with new officers to determine next meeting date (in winter quarter)

We discussed plans for our first general meeting to be held on Dec 9, 2020. We organized several potential breakout rooms according to topic and discussed how officer elections could be handled.

Mission Statement Workshop We began the workshop with brainstorming in pairs about values we'd like to see in the club, and outcomes we would like to see. Next, we brainstormed our own visions for how AWM can implement these outcomes and values. We then wrote some of these ideas on the chalkboards and circulated, starring ideas we agreed with and adding question marks to ideas we didn't understand.

Ideas we came up with included:

Binning ideas:

1. Intersectionality
   • acknowledgement of the variety of privileges we all enjoy
   • promote intersectional diversity of representation of women in math
2. Social/Community
   • mentorship events, social events
   • fostering an environment of inclusion and support for women in math
   • talk to other women in STEM groups
3. Professional Development
   • technical, women-led workshops
   • diverse speaker series
   • celebrate history of successful women/minorities in math
   • mentorship
   • spotlight various math career paths
   • workshops on how to deal with sexism/bigotry
   • helping women find opportunities for funding research
4. Outreach
   • outreach events to middle/high school girls
   • push more diversity in admissions/applications

Sample statement ideas:

1. Intersectionality:
   • Acknowledge socioeconomic, racial, gender, sexual orientation differences and uplift mathematicians with those backgrounds
   • celebrate & promote diversity
2. Social/Community:
   • Fostering community and building a network of women and allies with/among math fields and across undergrad/grad/postdocs/faculty.
3. Professional Development:
   • Provide info about careers in math
   • workshops led by women
   • provide info about funding/ group travel to conferences
   • talks as a form of inspiration, lunches with speakers
   • field trips/group travel to conferences
4. Outreach
   • Workshop how to reach out effectively to young girls, to both inspire and combat stereotypes
   • Do outreach events
   • AWM will coordinate outreach activities at local schools to expose students to the broad world of math. Meanwhile, AWM will also facilitate training on strategies for effective outreach.

• Copresidents - Emily Meyer and Katy Jarvis
• Treasurer - Lily Silverstein
• Secretary - Carter Johnson
• Undergraduate Chair - Dannie Kiel
• Communications Director - Esha Datta
• Workshop Chair - Sam Fleischer

NSF Research has shown that middle and high school is the best time to encourage girls to get into STEM careers, so this is our target age group!

• Winters High School - May 11th or 18th (unconfirmed)
• STEM 4 Girls - May 5th, 10am-12pm
  • Organizational Meeting 1:30-2:20pm, 4/13 in 3240 MSB

• “Calculus is Cool”
• Monty Hall Problem
• Q&A Panel
  • Need to research positive ways to answer questions about discrimination, possibly a goal for a workshop or meeting to create guidelines

• Would be good to revisit schools
• Could collaborate with M-PACT or Math Circle

Leah Edelstein-Keshet's generous donation will be used to fund the “AWM Women in Mathematical Biology Speaker Series”

• We will be able to fund 5 or 6 speakers, 2 of which are from UCD.
• Speaker series will have a research talk, a meal with AWM members, and a short, informal discussion about experiences
• Katy & Emily have a nice long list of speakers to invite

We need to improve on this, undergrads don't know about any of our events/programs! Fliers in MSB and emails to @grads not the most effective methods.

• FB and Instagram pages will be maintained by Esha
• We need to get weekly updates on the department email newsletter undergrads get
• We need to take more pictures! Perhaps there is a service on campus that can help?

Sam probably has lots of ideas, but was absent. New idea: Technical Workshops led by women for undergrads on LaTeX, MATLAB, etc.

• Informal, small room was effective! 1147 is too empty and intimidating
• Should have another social event this quarter
• Perhaps blending mentorship/technical workshops together for an event - intimate and helpful training

• Money for small travel awards? This will directly support women in the the department.
• Lily, Esha, and Sarah Driver are working towards making the 1st floor restrooms gender-neutral. Put the backing of AWM behind the efforts?
• Putting pronouns on the department website.
• Writing letters to dept. hiring/admissions/speaker-inviting committees encouraging them to consider diversity
  • Research diversity efforts already in place
  • Allow member feedback on letters before sending
• Adding more diversity training to the 1st-year TA seminar - e.g. UndocuAlly program
  • Can use campus resources to get the right people to lead the lessons