Pomona College Hosts EDGE Program to Support Graduate Women in Mathematics
Pomona College, one of the Claremont Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges, continues its tradition of promoting mathematics among females by once again hosting a national program designed to increase the number of women at top levels in the field of mathematics. Fourteen women, headed for graduate schools across the US this fall, spent the four weeks of June 5, through July 3, 2008 on the Pomona College campus reviewing and advancing their knowledge of mathematics in a program known as EDGE. This unique program, Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE), is structured to provide an academic bridge from undergraduate to graduate school and to prepare students for the distinctively different culture awaiting the small number of women who choose to study mathematics. Organized as a special project of the Mathematics Departments of Bryn Mawr and Spelman Colleges, EDGE seeks to diversify the mathematics community and is therefore particularly inclusive of women of color.
Dr. Ami Radunskaya, Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College, is the local coordinator for the EDGE Program and has been associated with the EDGE program since 1998. She is a faculty member teaching Analysis and Dynamical Systems and was the local director of EDGE in 2003. President Oxtoby along with the Pomona College Department of Mathematics, extended a warm welcome to the program providing support through the use of dormitory space, classrooms, recreational facilities and laboratories, and especially through the support of its faculty and staff. Pomona College mathematics faculty involved in the program include Gizem Kraali, Johanna Hardin, and Erica Flapan. In addition, mathematicians from Harvey Mudd College, Rachel Levy; Cal Poly Pomona's Robin Wilson, UC Santa Barbara's Emille Davie, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Nanaz Fathpour appeared and gave a guest lecture to the students and to the general public.
Graduate school attrition is currently the focus of considerable national attention. EDGE was established in 1998 to address some of the perceived causes of attrition among women and other under-represented groups in mathematics with a combined effort of academic enhancement, mentoring, networking with peers, and a preliminary introduction to the graduate school climate. In short, the program is structured to provide an academic bridge to graduate school and to determine and implement strategies that help retain women in the pipeline as they persist to the doctorate. As the only West Coast institution to host the eleven-year-old EDGE program, Pomona College joins Bryn Mawr College, Spelman College, North Carolina A&T State University and New College, Florida in giving tangible support as a host institution for the women of EDGE. Since 1998 more than 100 female students have been participants in EDGE, with approximately one-half from underrepresented minority groups. In this group of 14 EDGE students, several had been out of school and working, returning to graduate school in the fall of 2008.
National EDGE founders and directors, Dr. Rhonda Hughes, the Helen Herrmann Professor of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College, and Dr. Bozeman, visited Pomona College for two weeks during the middle of the program. A special feature of the summer session is a reunion weekend when new participants can hear first hand the experiences of previous EDGE participants specifically about their time in graduate school.
Current funding for the program came from the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.
For further information contact:
Professor Ami Radunskaya
Department of Mathematics
610 N. College Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711
909-621-8715
E-mail: aradunskaya@pomona.edu