campus

Inspiring Women of Color to Do Math

AWOW, Advocates for Women of the World, is a student organization at Ohio State that advocates for international women’s rights. One of their goals is to promote access to education for everyone. As such, on November 16 they held an event in which around 30 young girls visited the Columbus Campus. For this, they partnered up with Proyecto MarProyecto Mariposas girls and AWOW members posing in the Department's lobbyiposas, a non-profit Columbus based organization that provides an environment of learning, sharing, and support to Latina girls and their mothers.

During the event, AWOW members led the girls on a tour around campus. The visitors also met with Office of Diversity and Inclusion Assistant Vice Provost, Yolanda Zepeda, to talk about the Latinx experience on a college campus.

Buckeye Aha! Math Moments was happy to join their efforts by welcoming the girls in the Mathematics Tower. During their short visit to our Department, they listened to Assistant Professor Liz Vivas‘ experience. Originally from Peru, Liz is a living example of how women of color can succeed in college and in mathematics. Girls also peaked into a Girls Exploring Math Monthly workshop that was being held that same day and were invited to join for those workshops as well as BAMM’s other activities.

The Department of Mathematics is a big one, and it welcomes all people regardless of race and gender. However, certain groups, such as women of color, are still underrepresented. With small actions like this one, BAMM hopes to contribute to create a more diverse environment.

Ciencias 2019

BAMM attended Ciencias 2019. The event, organized by the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), is OSU’s Annual Diversity in STEM Networking Event.

We had the opportunity to connect with underrepresented minority STEM students and professionals at Ohio State. The attendees enjoyed math by engaging in solving puzzles on our table.

Cole, an Earth Sciences graduate student, said he experienced the “aha!” moment when he figured out a way of solving a puzzle. The puzzle consists of 4 knights on a 3 by 3 chessboard, two black knights on the corners of one side of the board, and two white ones on the corners of the opposing side. The goal is to move the pieces until the black ones are where the white ones were in the beginning, and vice versa. Of course the pieces can only be moved following chess rules: the knight moves tracing an “L”, to a square that is two squares away horizontally and one square vertically, or two squares vertically and one square horizontally.

Cole has almost given up when he saw it. He said “All pieces move in the same way, so we can circle them around until we reach 4 knights on a 3 by 3 chessboard.the desired configuration”. And he did it! Then his friend came and solved the puzzle in a different way. He then experienced a second “aha!” moment.

Other attendees solved the tangram and the soma cube. We loved sharing our passion for math with OSU students, faculty, and staff from different departments.

BAMM strives to be an inclusive program. Some of our activities target specific underrepresented minorities and most of them offer bilingual support (English/Spanish).