UNL Math Department wins top American Mathematical Society award

The Department of Mathematics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has received the 2009 Award for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department from the American Mathematical Society. Presented annually, the award recognizes a college or university mathematics department that has distinguished itself by undertaking an unusual or particularly effective program of value to the mathematics community, internally or in relation to the rest of society.

The department is well known for its success in mentoring women graduate students in mathematics. In the late 1980s, professor Jim Lewis, who had just started a term as department chair, realized that the department was not serving well its women graduate students. Even though women made up 20 percent of the graduate student population during the 1980s, the department awarded no Ph.D.s to women in that decade. In challenging the department to seriously address this problem, Lewis set the mathematics faculty on a transformational course.

Some of the steps taken were small -- making sure that outstanding women undergraduates are encouraged to consider graduate school, having an open-door policy so that students feel comfortable coming for help, supplying cookies for the graduate student seminar. Other steps were larger and more strategic, such as improving financial support for graduate students and instituting qualifying examination workshops and providing students with opportunities to build a professional portfolio.

In 1998, the department received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, specifically for its success in mentoring women graduate students. The department used the $10,000 award to launch the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics, which has become an annual tradition, drawing 200 women students from across the country to the UNL campus each winter. Among the other programs in the department are IMMERSE, a summer bridge program for math majors who have just been accepted into graduate school; All Girls All Math, a week-long summer math camp for mathematically talented high school girls; and Nebraska Math, a teacher development program aimed at improving mathematics education across the state of Nebraska.

The official announcement of the award, including the selection committee's citation, appears today in the May 2009 issue of the Notices of the AMS, www.ams.org/notices.