@inbook{129e5267186f4541bbf7040e985b7d61,
title = "Telling Our Stories: The Essay Contest",
author = "Howle, {Victoria E.} and Lewis, {Heather A.}",
note = "Funding Information: While the first six years of the contest, 2001 through 2006, could be described as the origin and refinement of the Essay Contest, the next two years were characterized by changes in the support structure. The AWM Education Committee had provided assistance with the logistics while Sandia National Laboratories continued to support the contest financially, but in 2007 Vicki moved to Texas to begin work at Texas Tech, and Sandia was no longer directly involved with the contest. With no obvious source of funding for the prizes, the contest was at risk of coming to a halt until an anonymous donor offered to provide the financial support, allowing it to continue for another year. The Grand Prize winner that year was Leena Shah, a student at Hartland Middle School at Ore Creek in Brighton, Michigan. Leena interviewed Melanie Matchett Wood, who was both the first woman on the United States International Mathematical Olympiad Team and, in 2002, the first American woman to be named a Putnam Fellow.1 As of 2020, Melanie is a professor at Harvard University in addition to being an editor of several journals, but at the time of the interview she was still a graduate student: Funding Information: MfA believes that putting teachers first encourages the most accomplished to enter the profession and continue teaching longer. Putting teachers first ultimately puts students first as well. The NYC program is funded primarily by the Simons Foundation. It has inspired a similar program in the rest of New York State, which is publicly funded. Funding Information: Dr. Piper H, a Black, female mathematician, gave a talk about mathematics and racism, and for the first time, Dr. Loving felt heard. “I was just seeing all of these events as indicating how terrible I was, and how bad I was at math,” she confesses. “[The talk] gave the experiences I was having names and made visible to me the underlying structures that were manifesting all these things that I just assumed were isolated incidents happening to me. It just felt like a relief.” ...[Later, after Dr. Loving told her advisor about her experiences] He believed her. He refuted the crushing comments, telling her, “No one can tell what kind of mathematician you can be until you become it.” The prejudice and harm Dr. Loving and other women of color face did not end that day. But a new chapter opened for Dr. Loving. With a newfound feeling of belonging as a mathematician, she completed her thesis and was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work at Georgia Tech. Now, she doesn{\textquoteright}t just limit group theory to her research. Instead, she works with Justin Lanier on SUBgroups, online support groups that connect first-year math graduate students in order to help them break through the same feelings of inadequacy and isolation Dr. Loving suffered. “Mathematics is based on the connections you have with other people,” Dr. Loving states. “Almost all math today is done collaboratively. I{\textquoteright}m a Native Hawaiian woman. I{\textquoteright}m the first Native Hawaiian woman to get a PhD in mathematics. A big value of mine, as a Hawaiian, is community, and so I see this very much as a coming together of my values as a person and as a mathematician.” 2020 Grand Prize, “A Lonely Road to Loving Math,” Lu Paris of Head-Royce School in Oakland, California.",
year = "2022",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-030-82658-1_23",
language = "English",
series = "Association for Women in Mathematics Series",
publisher = "Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH",
pages = "241--269",
booktitle = "Association for Women in Mathematics Series",
}