Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

So, Your Mom Wants To Be A Mathematician, Edie Stevens

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Despite all the stereotypes about them, mothers possess a skill set that makes them outstanding potential mathematicians. Most are organized, detail oriented, driven, determined, effective communicators; they are able to break down any concept or task into its principal components, and they can be logical and persuasive even when addressing the most formidable and unwilling audience. In short, no matter how messy, difficult, or tedious the task at hand, moms excel at getting the job done. This is my affirming story of how I left my engineering career to raise a family and returned to academia to pursue a doctoral …

Motherhood And Teaching: Radical Care, Ksenija Simic-Muller

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This essay is a personal reflection on how I leverage my positioning as a caregiver in my roles of a mathematician, teacher, and mother, to advance a vision for a more just and equitable society. I argue that care at home and in the classroom takes similar forms, and can be liberating instead of oppressive.

From Ecstasy To Agony And Back: Mathematics, Motherhood, And Postpartum Depression, Azadeh Rafizadeh

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this essay I address some challenges I had to overcome as a non-tenured mathematician mother married to another mathematician. While some of these challenges, such as lack of sleep, were predictable, many were not. For example, I was not aware that just getting pregnant would be a difficulty. Also, I did not know how paralyzing postpartum depression could be. Looking back on these experiences after a few years, I have a new perspective. I share my experiences, feelings about them, and some of the ways I figured out to overcome the hardships I experienced.

The Grieving Mathematician And Mother, Kimberly A. Roth

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Grieving while teaching and researching is a tricky task. Support from the local community and from the larger mathematical community were important after my son Drew’s death. In this essay I describe my motherhood and grief journeys and how they intersected with my career, and also offer suggestions for others supporting parents in similar situations.

Finding Hope Amidst The Pain Of Pregnancy Loss, Jessica Oshaughnessy

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Pregnancy does not come easily to all women. This story shares my personal struggles with early miscarriage and second trimester losses and the struggle to balance grief in a professional setting.

Pb & J, Elizabeth Gross

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this essay on academic life as a mother and a mathematician, I explore pregnancy in graduate school, parenting on the tenure-track, division of household labor, and sandwiches.

My Best Laid Plan, Becky E. Hall

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This story ties together the precise planning traits of mathematicians with the challenges of motherhood.

Does Math Help With Addition?, Ellen Veomett

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Math always has the answer, right? In this humor-speckled piece, we probe the answer to that question in a challenging context: the mathematician as mother. Unfortunately, we’ll find that skill and knowledge in mathematics does not necessarily translate to skill and knowledge in making, birthing, and raising people. But can motherhood in some way improve us as mathematicians?

Reflections On Challenging Times, Jacqueline Jensen-Vallin

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

As many academic mamas do, I waited until I was (almost) tenured to try to have my children. After a couple of miscarriages, I got pregnant with twins. Here I present both personal stories and tales of how colleagues were treated by their department and administration when they were pregnant. Some had administrative duties revoked, some were encouraged to engage in academic dishonesty in order to have maternity leave, and some were not eligible for any leave. I also provide suggestions of how others might handle these encounters better than we pregnant faculty did.

The Elephant (-Sized Belly) In The Room, Teena Carroll

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Had I known about the grim employment statistics facing mothers in academia I might have chosen a different path. I share my story of navigating the academic job market while visibly pregnant and connect my experiences to the wider issue of biases against motherhood in academia. Ultimately I was lucky to get a tenure-track job right out of graduate school, but the environment I found myself in was hostile to me as a new mother. There has been much interest in increasing gender diversity of the professorate, especially in mathematics; it is valuable to look specifically at how motherhood and …

The Multiple Identities Of A Mathematics Professor Mom, Margaret J. Mohr-Schroeder

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this essay, i dive into the multiple identities of a Mathematics Professor Mom and how we interchange those identities as we work to achieve harmony (not balance!) in our lives.

Family As Vocation; Work As Mission, Sara B. Quinn, Christina Safranski

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The terms vocation and mission are often considered synonyms; both meaning work to which one feels called and deeply dedicated. But, for working mothers who feel called and deeply dedicated to both family and work, it can be useful to make a distinction between vocation and mission. Inspired by Catholicism and working for Catholic universities, we explore how the terms vocation and mission have been traditionally defined. The Catholic Church recognizes only four vocations (married life, single life, religious life, and ordained life), while there are countless specific missions that individuals and institutions can carry out. Each of these ideas …

A Letter To My Daughters, Maeve L. Mccarthy

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This piece is a letter to my two daughters, Susan and Nora, to explain why I am a working mother, why being a mathematician and a woman in science is important to me. I hope they will read it someday and be inspired. I hope they will realize that while the balance between family and work continually shifts, it is possible to have it all.

Calculating Intersections: The Crossroads Of Mathematics And Literature In The Lives Of Mother And Daughter, Della Dumbaugh, Hannah Fenster

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This article tells the stories of how we, Della (mom, mathematician) and Hannah (daughter, writing instructor and bookseller), arrived in our professional settings through the lens of mother and daughter. For us, the intersections of literature and mathematics inspired many of our pivotal moments.

The Upside Of Down Syndrome: Math Is My Superpower!, Heidi Berger

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

My son Isaac has Down syndrome. He was born in 2015, within a year of me receiving tenure at Simpson College. The experience of being his mother has had a profound effect on me as a mathematician. Having been with him through eleven surgeries over sixteen hospitalizations, I wanted to learn about his medical complexities and, more generally, about coordinated health care for those with chronic illness. To accomplish these goals, I’ve looked to my teaching and research. In the spring of 2016, I designed a sophomore-level mathematical modeling course on the respiratory system. In the summer of 2016, I …

A Math Research Project Inspired By Twin Motherhood, Tiffany N. Kolba

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The phenomenon of twins, triplets, quadruplets, and other higher order multiples has fascinated humans for centuries and has even captured the attention of mathematicians who have sought to model the probabilities of multiple births. However, there has not been extensive research into the phenomenon of polyovulation, which is one of the biological mechanisms that produces multiple births. In this paper, I describe how my own experience becoming a mother to twins led me on a quest to better understand the scientific processes going on inside my own body and motivated me to conduct research on polyovulation frequencies. An overview of …

The Situatedness Of Mathematics In Motherhood And Academia, Jennifer Schenk Sacco, Jill Shahverdian

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The authors, a mathematician and a political scientist, examine mathematics, motherhood, and academia, and argue that feminist epistemology is necessary to explain the intersection. Relying on the principles of feminist epistemology laid out by philosophers Naomi Scheman and Marianne Janack, the authors consider how work, the concept of time, teaching, arts and crafts, and decision-making all reveal the situatedness of knowing and using mathematics.

Math Mamas: Changing The Narrative, Pamela E. Harris, Becky Hall, Emille Lawrence, Carrie Diaz Eaton

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

How To Wear More Than One Hat Well, Mark Huber, Gizem Karaali

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Man, Machine, Scientific Models And Creation Science, Steven M. Gollmer

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Historically, physics was the most quantitative of the sciences. Geologists and biologists built their models based on observation, categorization and generalization. This distinction between qualitative and quantitative sciences prompted the quote attributed to Ernest Rutherford that “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” In the intervening 80 years all sciences have exploded in the use of quantitative measures to find patterns and trends in data. A review of a half-century of creationist literature shows that this transition has not been lost to the creationist community.

As this trend continues to accelerate, two areas of caution need to be taken …

Title Page

Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

No abstract provided.

Children Of God Living In A Groaning Creation, David Schelhaas

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Virtually every climate researcher in the world agrees that the earth is warming and that human action, especially through the burning of fossil fuels, is the primary cause of this warming."

Posting about a Christian response to climate change from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/children-of-god-living-in-a-groaning-creation/

You Can Judge A Bearer By Its Bark: Dogs Use Sound To Size Up Conspecifics, Zachary Silver

CrissCross

A variety of mammalian species use vocalizations to perceive the size of conspecifics. This ability may be an evolutionary adaptation shared by many mammalian species allowing them to detect the presence of a threat when visual resources are scarce or unavailable. Specifically, some mammals demonstrate prolonged attention to manipulated calls that suggest a larger conspecific compared to those suggesting a smaller conspecific. In humans this behavioral effect depends on the observer’s size—perceptions of ‘big’ or ‘small’ may differ between individuals. We explored whether this generalizes to other species by manipulating formant dispersion of dogs’ own barks to create synthetic barks …

Mixed Logical And Probabilistic Reasoning In The Game Of Clue, Todd W. Neller, Ziqian Luo

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Neller and Ziqian Luo ’18 presented a means of mixed logical and probabilistic reasoning with knowledge in the popular deductive mystery game Clue. Using at-least constraints, we more efficiently represented and reasoned about cardinality constraints on Clue card deal knowledge, and then employed a WalkSAT-based solution sampling algorithm with a tabu search metaheuristic in order to estimate the probabilities of unknown card places.

Notes On Contributors

The Catch

No abstract provided.

On How A Fisherman Supports Fishermen: Oral History With Patrick Shepard, Natalie Springuel

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The Water, Patricia S. Ranzoni

The Catch

No abstract provided.

The World Is Your Oyster, Aliya Uteuova

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note: The Catch Volume Vi, Catherine Schmitt

The Catch

No abstract provided.