Women in Mathematics (WIM) Electronic Newsletter

Fall 1999, Issue 1

October 6, 1999

http://www.math.umd.edu/~wim/Fall99/Issue1.html

First Annual WIM Summer Picnic

 Thanks to the generous support of GSG, all those poor souls still here on campus in June were able to gather for lunch. It was an opportunity for faculty, students, and staff to sit in the grass and forget their worries (e.g. quals), at least for a little while. For those of you who couldn't make it, pictures of the picnic will appear in a future issue of the UMCP math department newsletter. Check it out! and we hope to see you next year.

WIM Graduate Student Seminar Update

 At the recent meeting (in August) of graduate students, the possibility of launching a graduate student seminar was discussed. This seminar would be similar in scope to the WIM seminar, with speakers drawn from the general graduate student population. At the same time, finding WIM speakers gets harder every semester, and getting an audience is not much easier.

This raises the question: what is the future of the WIM seminar? Does it make sense to continue the existing structure (and possibly compete for speakers with the new seminar series)? Should we devote our energies instead to encouraging women to speak in the new seminar, and focus on bringing women speakers from outside the UMCP community? What other possibilities remain?

That will be the topic of the next WIM brown bag lunch (see below). If you would like to participate in the decision-making process, please attend. If you can't make it, but have input, then please email wim@math.umd.edu before October 12th.

WIM Brown Bag Lunches

 The next lunch will be Tuesday, October 12th from 12 to 1 p.m. in room 2400.

We are going to discuss the future of the WIM seminar (see above). If you have ideas for the seminar, but won't be able to join us for lunch, please email to wim@math.umd.edu with your suggestions.

What We're Reading Now

 Battling Bias by Ruth Sidel (Penguin Books, 1994)

In this book, the author of Women and Children Last tackles issues facing higher education in the '90s. Incorporating interviews with college students, she deals with the problems of racial, ethnic, religious, class, gender, and homophobic discrimination in the university. As in her previous works, she provides the necessary counterweight to reactionary disinformation (and copious notes to back it up). Most importantly, she avoids simplistic reduction, and the result is well worth reading. (Like most books reviewed here, you can stop by 4204 to check out this book, if you ask nicely.)

Read any good books lately? If you have something you'd like to suggest, please let us know! You can send author, title, and publisher information to caj@math.umd.edu so the editor (a voracious reader) can sink her teeth into it, or you can write the review yourself and send it to wim@math.umd.edu in whatever format is most convenient.

Editor: Cathy Jones (caj@math.umd.edu)
Organization: WIM (wim@math.umd.edu or http://www.math.umd.edu/~wim)
Last modified: Wed Oct 6 17:04 1999