OUTREACH & SERVICE
Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) St. Olaf Student Chapter
Founded in 2019, the St. Olaf student chapter of AWM supports the national AWM mission: "to promote equal opportunity and the equal treatment of women and girls in the mathematical sciences, supporting individuals and institutions as we all work to make a more just and equitable community."
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Institute for Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (QSIDE)
Established in 2019, QSIDE is an institute of researchers and practitioners from colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada. We are diverse with respect to gender, gender expression, sex, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability status, family status, socioeconomic background, and more. We are united by our desire to address social justice issues through a quantitative lens. Our mission is to gain insights into inclusion, diversity, and equity through cross-disciplinary collaboration and cutting-edge quantitative techniques.
Applied Math in Action
For several years, a group of graduate students from Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics have presented their research to high schoolers participating in the Schuler Scholars Program, which equips low-income, minority, and first-generation college-bound students to succeed in highly selective universities. To prepare the presentations, the grad students along with two professors spent several days coaxing cohesive and interesting narratives out of the research talks. The scholars showed their comprehension and enthusiasm by asking subtle and creative questions. This experience was immensely rewarding for both the doctoral students and the Schuler Scholars.
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As a Searle Center Graduate Teaching Fellow (2016-17), I am expanding this program to involve more doctoral students in my department, more high school service organizations, and more innovative teaching techniques. As part of this goal, I facilitated several pre-event workshops for the graduate students to develop three interactive modules. We shared these modules with the Schuler Scholars at Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Chicago and at Northwestern University in Evanston.
The first module introduced students to the Wisdom of the Crowd, the idea that the average crowd estimate of an unknown quantity can be quite accurate. The students experienced the theory first-hand when they tried to guess the number of Skittles in a jar. The second module taught students about basic machine learning algorithms through the lens of Netflix movie recommendations. The students built a linear classifier for a thumbs up or thumbs down review of the movie Iron Man using known ratings for action and comedy movies. In the end, the students used their classifier to predict if their teachers would like Iron Man or not. The final module introduced students to the Metropolis algorithm using an interactive dice-rolling game. As a metaphor for a cost-effective storage problem, the students searched for an optimal arrangement of cups to hold a certain collection of M&Ms using the Metropolis algorithm.
Women in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
The Women of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (WESAM) is a group of Northwestern students, postdocs, and professors who promote equal opportunity for women in the mathematical sciences through outreach, professional development, and community building. WESAM was first initiated to give women in the ESAM department a space to discuss topics together.
ComSciCon-Chicago
ComSciCon-Chicago is a workshop designed to empower graduate students to communicate the complex concepts arising in science, engineering, and other technical fields to diverse audiences. Attendees will interact with and learn from fellow graduate student leaders in science communication, expert journalists, communication researchers, and scientists. I was an attendee in 2015 and a co-organizer in 2016.