SIAM DIVERSITY DAY 1997

SIAM Annual Meeting, Stanford, CA, July 15, 1997

Organizers:

Dr. James H. Curry
Applied Mathematics - CB 526 
University of Colorado                  
Boulder, CO 80309-0526

Juan C. Meza                   
Sandia National Laboratories                
P.O. Box 969                               
MS 9214	                      
Livermore, CA 94551-0969	

Office Telephone Number:

Curry (303) 492-6901
Meza  (510) 294-2425

Fax Number:

Electronic Mail Address:

curry@newton.colorado.edu
meza@ca.sandia.gov

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) will conduct a workshop focused on enhancing diversity and increasing participation by underrepresented minorities in the mathematical and computational sciences. This workshop will be held on July 15, 1997, as part of SIAM's Annual Meeting at Stanford University.

In October 1995, SIAM initiated and held a workshop for underrepresented minority students during its annual meeting in Charlotte. The workshop was organized by three minority graduate students from Rice University, with guidance and support from Professor Richard Tapia of Rice University. The format of the workshop was designed after extensive discussions by Professor Tapia and his minority graduate students, based on their experience with other workshops and programs.

The workshop was intended to accomplish several goals:

• to send a clear, explicit message of enthusiastic welcome and support from SIAM to members of underrepresented groups. The workshop was deliberately held as part of a regular SIAM meeting so that the participants could combine the experiences of attending a regular scientific meeting and a special occasion dedicated to them;
• to bring together a mixture of people from different levels of age and professional experience, ranging from undergraduate students to senior scientists. The undergraduate students (and their faculty advisors) were invited from local colleges and universities; the graduate students and senior scientists came from across the United States. SIAM was extremely fortunate to have the presence of numerous distinguished minority mathematicians who made a special trip just to attend the workshop;
• to provide an opportunity for minority graduate students to present their research at a major scientific meeting;
• to show undergraduate students the professional opportunities resulting from graduate degrees in science and mathematics;
• to provide an informal, comfortable setting (a lunch) where all the students could meet applied and computational mathematicians with a wide variety of jobs in academia, national laboratories, industry, and government;
• to arrange an evening session, ``The Real Deal'', moderated by Professor Tapia, in which students could speak frankly about professional and personal issues associated with pursuing an advanced scientific career.

The reaction of the students to the Charlotte workshop was very favorable, and several good suggestions for improvements were made. Many graduate students and postdocs were eager for SIAM to hold another such workshop.

SIAM intends to repeat this successful formula with some improvements at Stanford on Tuesday July 15, the second day of the SIAM Annual Meeting. Professor James H. Curry, University of Colorado, Boulder, and Dr. Juan C. Meza, Sandia National Laboratories, California, are co-chairs for the Stanford workshop. The program will follow the format of the 1995 Charlotte workshop, with some improvements based on feedback from the attendees.

Technical Talks: The centerpiece of the workshop will be technical presentations by minority graduate students, postdocs, and recent Ph.D.'s. These talks will be attended by the undergraduate participants and their faculty advisors. The talks will also be listed in the regular meeting program, and are open to anyone who wishes to attend. The technical talks will run during the day, beginning with a speakers' breakfast, with a lunch (see below) in the middle. The talks are scheduled so that workshop participants can attend the SIAM Community Lecture and reception being held at the late afternoon as part of the regular annual meeting program.

The tentative speakers are (subject to availability of travel support):

• Jamylle Carter, University of California, Los Angeles
• Ricardo Cortez, Courant Institute
• Rudy Horne, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Alice Livingston, Arizona State University
• Dawn Lott-Crumpler, University of Maryland, College Park
• Douglas Varela, California Institute of Technology
• Rebecca Varela, University of California, Berkeley
• Leticia Velasquez, Rice University
• Cristina Villalobos, Rice University

Lunch, ``Conversations with Scientists'': As in the first workshop, the lunch plays an important part in the workshop. The idea of the lunch is to mix together the workshop participants with distinguished minority mathematicians and a hand picked group of SIAM members (chosen for their diversity of careers and their ability to interact with students in an informal setting). At lunch, participants will be seated in relatively small groups (tables of 8--10), to encourage conversation. This format worked extremely well at the Charlotte meeting. The topics discussed covered a wide range---for example, ``What courses should I take?'', ``Why should I get a Ph.D.?'', and ``What's it like to be an applied mathematician in industry?''---and everyone seemed to feel comfortable and interested in the conversations.

Community Lecture and Reception: The SIAM Community Lecture, held at annual meetings, is open to the public, and is given by an outstanding speaker on a topic in applied and computational mathematics of broad general interest. The community lecture is at the technical level of an advanced high school student with technical interests. At Stanford the Community Lecture is being given by Professor Joseph B. Keller of Stanford University, on ``The Mathematics of Games and Sports''. The Community Lecture is followed by a reception.

Evening Session, ``The Real Deal: An Informal Student Session'': At the end of the day, an evening session will be held, as in Charlotte, to provide an opportunity for students to discuss frankly their professional and personal experiences. In the previous meeting, this session brought together distinguished mathematicians from academia and industry who gave a perspective on what it is like to be a minority mathematician and what types of rewards and problems the students could expect as they progress through their professional careers.

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