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Thursday, November 16, 2006
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Blackwell-Tapia Conference
in Minnesota and the 16th
annual MathFest that was
held at Howard University.
“One of the major purposes
of the conference is to show-
case what’s been achieved by
this group of people and to
give an opportunity for people
to get together for the
younger people in the field to
meet the successful senior
people,” said Douglas Arnold,
a professor of mathematics
and director of the Institute
for Math and Its Applications
at the University of
Minnesota.
During the Blackwell-Tapia
conference, the nearly 150
minority mathematicians
joined together to discuss
trends in minorities in math,
and put on a program called
“Math Is Cool” for nearly 100
local minority high school
students.
Cooper knows all too well
the importance of all of these
functions. When he earned
his Ph.D in 1993, he was one
of five blacks awarded a doc
torate in mathematics that
particular year. He said
events like the Blackwell-
Tapia Conference and
Mathfest are encour^ing a
new generation of Black
mathematicians.
“The numbers (of black
Ph.D.s} were in single digits
fairly steadily until the late
90s. But we’ve stayed there.
So it’s still a small number...
There are various programs
and efforts to try to do a little
better. But there’s still plenty
to be done,” he said.
At the MathFest, math
undergraduate students from
Howard, Morehouse,
Spelman, Delaware State,
Morgan State and others met
their peers and mathemati
cians working in science,
national security, and for
large accounting firms.
Panelists at MathFest
explained that math can help
the U.S. government break
foreign codes in our airwaves
to figuring out why Monarch
butterflies may no longer
exist in the next 20 years.
During a question and
answer period, students were
delighted to find out their
chosen career path can be
lucrative and fulfilling.
Certain jobs, the panelists
said, may have starting of
$60,000 with just a
Bachelor's degree. For
Ph.D.s, the students were
told, some tenured math pro
fessors could easily earn six
figures.
Ashley Crump, junior math
major from Howard, fell in
love with math as a fourth
grader in Ft. Worth, Tfexas. •
She said her fourth grade
teacher and high school
Advanced Placement
Calculus teachers inspired
her to pursue math in college.
“When I first got (to
Howard), ! had no idea what
I was going to do with math. I
had no idea about graduate
school no one ever told me
about that. I was just doing it
because I liked math. So pro
grams like these, different
conferences to go to, really
teach you more about the
opportunities, more about
your field. You get to meet a
lot of people and you see
those same people at differ
ent conferences so you get to
network,” she said.
Crump, who plans on pur
suing her Ph.D., like her
teachers, said she wants to go
her old school and encourage
black students to get into
math.
“I want to at some point and
go back to explain to students
there’s money to be made and
people don’t like it so if you
can do it. Go do it and you will
be a commodity,” she said.
The idea of getting excited
about math and spreading it
to other young black people is
exactly why Scott Williams
became one of the founders of
the National Association of
Mathematicians, the organi
zation responsible for
MathFest, and the creator of
the Mathematicians of the
African Diaspora website.
Williams, a world-
renowned math professor
currently at the State
University of New York at
Buffalo, remembers when he
was one of about four black
Ph.D.s in 1969.
Sitting in the back row of
the auditorium, Williams
beamed as he looked out over
the crowd of students, profes
sors and math professionals
discussing internship and job
opportunities.
‘When I started out I didn’t
know anybody (black) in
mathematics. It was a while
before I got to leam a few peo
ple. So I think organizations
like this are phenomenal,” he
said.
Numbers from the College
Board show that while num
bers are improving for black
students taking the
Advanced Placement
Calculus exams in the last
decade, they still make up a
small percentage of test tak-
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