Aerial Van Vleck 1600X800
Back to News
Share

After graduation, a group of six female graduate students in mathematics will head off to post-doctoral opportunities at some of the most prestigious institutions in the United States, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, the University of California-Berkeley, Texas A&M University and the University of Michigan. Their success, in a field that has historically presented institutional challenges for women, says something important about the environment for female students in the Department of Mathematics at UW-Madison. 

While the math department has made important strides in improving the environment for female students—there are now 11 female faculty members, one of the highest proportions among major research universities in the United States—the challenges of being female in an incredibly competitive academic field are real.

“As a woman, to be taken into consideration as a valued mathematician, you have to work harder to prove your worth,” says Eva Elduque, one of the six. “It would have been a lot harder for me if there hadn’t been others like me here.”

Five of the graduate students hail from China—Wanlin Li, Amy Huang, Yuhua Zhu, Di Fang and Yuan Liu—while Elduque hails from Spain.  They didn’t just survive during their time at UW—they thrived.

From left: Yuhua Zhu, Yuan Liu, Wanlin Li and Di Fang pose with math department chair Tonghai Yang. These four were part of a cohort of female graduate students to earn prestigious post-doctoral opportunities after graduation. Photo by Sara Nagreen

All racked up an impressive set of awards: Just this year, Fang won a campus Capstone Ph.D. Award for her work as a teaching assistant, while Elduque and Liu each won an Excellence in Math Research award and Zhu won the John Nohel Prize in Applied Mathematics. (A seventh female graduate student, Jing Hao, earned her degree in December and will begin post-doctoral work at Georgia Tech University in the fall.)  While this isn’t the largest cohort of female graduate students to graduate from UW’s math program at one time, it is one of the most successful.   

“These students are really strong and worked very hard,” says Tonghai Yang, department chair.  “They should be proud of what they’ve accomplished here.” 

Mathematics professor Jordan Ellenberg, who helped recruit the six female students while serving as the department’s director of graduate admissions, says that intentional hiring of female faculty, as well as gleaning and deploying best practices from peer institutions has helped to change the department’s culture. For instance, he points to changes the department made in one of its central placement exams.  Previously, the test featured what Ellenberg described as “Math Olympiad-style” questions, where a trick, rather than depth of mathematical knowledge, was the key to finding a solution. Those types of questions tended to privilege male students, who were more likely to have encountered them on their school’s math teams, which are often dominated by boys. 

“Connecting with female professors and post-docs was so important. They became my role models.”

“We didn’t make the test easier—we calibrated what we wanted to test for,” Ellenberg explains. “And the truth is that when it comes to the strength of the department, you can’t figure things out with a math problem. You have to hear it from the students.”

Improved communication with students—both male and female-—is a point echoed by math professor Daniel Erman, who describes these women as “a really impressive and collaborative cohort.”

“Students succeed because they prop each other up,” he says, “Building these networks can be powerful.”

Forging connections was certainly a key for each of the six female graduate students. For Li, the opportunity to attend national conferences held by groups like the Association for Women in Mathematics and Women in Numbers gave her an important opportunity to network with other female mathematicians. Zhu agrees.  

“At the applied math conferences that I went to, I’m not the only female student,” she says. “I never felt alone in academics.”  

Camaraderie among the six—and with female mentors within the department— also helped.

“We got together for brunches on the weekends, and we talked to each other when we’re not doing well, in math or in life,” Li says. “Connecting with female professors and post-docs was so important. They became my role models.”

Last week, Yang took time for a celebratory lunch with five of the six students (Huang left early to join her advisor at the University of California San-Diego. She’ll begin her post-doc work at Texas A&M University in the fall).  He took the opportunity to share some wisdom about the value of persistence and learning from struggles.

The advice resonated with Fang, who’s headed to UC-Berkeley in July.   

“You have this landscape, and you have to ask yourself, what are the connections you can make?” Fang says. “These obstacles we’ve overcome will transport us to a better situation later in our careers.”