Journal cover: Notices of the American Mathematical Society

Notices of the American Mathematical Society

Welcome to the current issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
With support from AMS membership, we are pleased to share the journal with the global mathematical community.

An Excerpt from Testimonios: Stories of Latinx and Hispanic Mathematicians

Jessica M. Deshler

0.1. Work-life balance and moving slowly

I started my graduate program directly out of my undergraduate program, and two years later when I was completing my master’s degree, I decided to get married and start a family. I knew I wanted to have (lots of) children. I was not willing to wait until I was out of school because I knew that would take years. I had heard stories from faculty members who waited until they were in a tenure-track job, then waited until they earned tenure, then promotion, and then it was too late to start a family, or it was difficult to do so. I had always wanted a large family. I made a decision early on that my family would be my focus and school would have to work around that. This was the beginning of putting my family and personal needs above my research and academic needs, or at least at the same level.

I was initially drawn to applied mathematics, and my first exposure to research was in this field, working with mathematics and engineering faculty members on research we conducted in a fluids lab on campus. We studied a particular type of fluid flow through experimental set-ups and numerical simulations. We did this for a year or so, then this project provided a tremendous opportunity in the form of a summer internship running the numerical simulations at a national laboratory using their software and computing facilities. While this was a great chance to get to know what industry research is like, it was also a chance for me to realize that working in a cubicle on a computer all day was not the environment where I would thrive. After the internship, and some more time spent collecting data in the lab, my advisor left my department for a position at another school. He had two doctoral students at the time—a single man with no strong ties to the city and me. At this time, I was already married with a couple of kids. The other student went with our advisor to his new institution and continued to work with him while I stayed in my hometown and floundered a bit. I stopped working in the program full time, I stayed home with my kids for a couple of semesters while I figured out if a PhD was really what I wanted. Eventually, I decided to meet with the graduate program director to determine my options. I probably should have done this sooner, but didn’t know that this person was a resource for me.

At the time my advisor left, I was pregnant. While I knew that starting a family would slow down my degree progress, I also knew it was the right decision for me. The opinion that graduate school was the right time for starting a family was not shared by everyone around me. The graduate program director made it very clear to me during that meeting that he did not believe I should be pursuing a PhD while having children. (I wrote an article about this experience that many people seemed to be able to relate to.)⁠Footnote1 This interaction fueled me forward to completing my degree through choosing a different advisor and new research project. This time, I decided I wanted to know more about teaching and learning. A faculty member in my department, Dr. Kristin Umland, had just changed her research area from mathematics to mathematics education and she agreed to supervise me to write my dissertation.

1

J. Deshler (2017). Mixing Babies and Graduate School, MAA Focus, Vol. 37, No.1. digitaleditions.walsworthprintgroup.com/publication/?m=7656&i=392392&p=0&ver=html5

✖

I firmly believe I completed my degree just to spite faculty members who shared the opinion that I shouldn’t be there, that the dissertation should be all consuming and the only thing on which I should spend time and energy. I’ve carried the drive I needed to complete the degree into my role as a faculty member. Not only do I still focus on family and integrate both my personal and professional lives as much as possible (my kids have been to LOTS of conferences in lots of cool places, and even lived overseas for a year so I could work there), but I also use my position to act as a role model for students. Graduate students still struggle sometimes with deciding whether they can have families while in school. I try to support them as best I can, and I am now more able to do so since I oversee the graduate program and all graduate students in my department. I am particularly focused on supporting women in mathematics and whatever choices they might make about their personal lives, in whatever ways I can. I ended up choosing a dissertation advisor during the end of my time in my PhD program who could relate to my personal circumstances. She had children slightly older than mine, and our research sessions sometimes included her children keeping my children entertained so we could work. I will be forever grateful for the work she did with me when we were both relatively new to mathematics education, and the work she did after I graduated as an advocate for me and for mathematics education. In my case, in particular, a faculty member in my (former) graduate department decided (after my graduation) that he did not believe mathematics faculty members should supervise dissertations in mathematics education and attempted to have my degree withdrawn by the university. Luckily for me, my advisor fought on my behalf and only relayed the story to me after it had been resolved.

Besides having children, I had other family commitments that occasionally took me away from research. My husband had to have a major operation while I was in school so I had to take a semester of medical leave to care for him. I also struggled academically sometimes. In addition to having to drop a course I wasn’t ready for, I also didn’t pass all of my preliminary exams the first time I took them. These are only a few of the setbacks I encountered while in my program. I use them as examples of how real life can cause you to need to adjust your expectations. For me, these slowed down my success, but they did not stop it. Through all of these experiences I realized I needed to make decisions that were best for me, not for others, and that nobody would know what that was except me. That part of my journey is a common one that students considering academia need to be ready for—you go where the jobs are. In my case, the job was great, but it was very far from family. I anticipate relocating closer to home when the time feels right, but for now I will stay where I am for my children’s sake.

0.2. Research and service

I have been fortunate to be able to pursue research in fields that inspire me. In particular, my experiences in graduate school have led me to believe that positive experiences in teaching and mentoring while in graduate school have a lasting impact on the future careers of mathematics graduate students. Together, my advisor and I navigated our way through the muddy waters of doing research in a field in which nobody else in our department worked and it turned out to be the best decision—it led me to my career in research in undergraduate mathematics education (RUME). I study the teaching and learning of mathematics at the college level.

I primarily study how graduate students progress in their teaching philosophies and teaching practices as they participate in various teaching and mentoring experiences. I love to work with them as they progress through their graduate programs and gain teaching experience and examine how their teaching practices and philosophies change over time. Professional development of this group, the next generation of mathematics faculty members, has become increasingly important as our students and our teaching environments change over time and I’ve been fortunate to be part of a group of people across the country studying this population and finding ways to support them and their students.

I am increasingly interested in the professional world of mathematics and the structural barriers it contains that work against the success of underrepresented mathematicians, including women mathematicians. I’ve studied programs that support women faculty members in mathematics, curriculum that provides opportunities for women in classrooms to have agency in their learning environments and programs we’ve built to support underrepresented students in calculus. I helped implement an Emerging Scholars Program (modeled off the work of Uri Treisman.)⁠Footnote2 in our calculus sequence and have spent the last few years examining which aspects of the program help build community among our underrepresented calculus students and support their persistence in STEM. My current institution, West Virginia University (WVU), is a predominantly white institution (PWI) located in Appalachia and is a drastically different cultural environment than those of the Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) that I attended as a student. Similar to how being white passing has required me to acquire a different set of skills, so has working in a PWI that has a very low percentage of underrepresented students. Developing programs to support marginalized students in this environment requires thinking differently about recruitment, logistics, and implementation. I’ve been fortunate to be able to bring funding to the university from professional societies and federal agencies to support some of this work.

2

Uri Treisman is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor, professor of mathematics, and professor of public affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is known for starting the Emerging Scholars Program, which works to ensure that all students, regardless of their life circumstances, have access to an excellent education. This program has been replicated in universities throughout the United States.

✖

Most of my research has been collaborative, which is fairly common in education work. I enjoy working with other researchers in mathematics education, but also those who study academic development, social sciences, education in other science disciplines and those who study the K–12 system. Collaborative work is an amazing way to learn about the world around you and to learn from others. I have been lucky to find ways to integrate my research areas into my service, teaching and administrative work. I currently serve as the Graduate Program Director and Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) coordinator in my department, overseeing the advising and progress of approximately 50 full-time graduate students, the development of the graduate program and the professional growth of approximately 30 GTAs. I see myself as a role model, advocate and resource for women in mathematics. Besides serving on department committees, I have served as a faculty associate for the WVU Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, as a Provost’s Fellow in the Office of Graduate Education and on my university’s Council for Women’s Concerns. However, one of my greatest professional achievements has to be when I was selected as a US Fulbright Scholar to spend a year providing professional development to mathematics doctoral students in Hungary. I have recently been promoted to Full Professor within my department. I am only the third woman to achieve this rank in my department’s history, and the first Hispanic faculty member to do so. I see my job as one of making the process better for those who come after me, and for opening doors and creating spaces of safety and equity for those who are not always welcomed into mathematics.

0.3. Personal advice

As noted, I have four children who are always the “WHY” for anything I’m doing. They are why I work hard, why I play hard, the reason I take care of business. It has been a joy watching them grow up and become their own people. They call West Virginia home, and have had a vastly different childhood than I did, but I hope they grow up believing it was a good one. When I was on sabbatical as a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary, my kids not only spent a year living abroad but had the chance to travel, as travel within Europe is inexpensive. We have visited places we had only read about in books previously. The pictures of my kids show them in amazing places around the world. These opportunities only happened because I didn’t give up when I hit obstacles, and I have realized that if I never try (to get research published, to get projects funded, to apply to programs like Fulbright), then I will never succeed at them. I no longer wait for “sure bets,” I pursue what I want and know that eventually, some of it will happen. I seek out people who are doing the work I want to do, and having the experiences I want to have, and get advice. Do the same. You dont have to do this alone. Find people to be your support network. Don’t give up, seek out mentors, ask for help, and find your own path, in your own time.

Jessica M. Deshler is a professor of mathematics and the assistant dean for graduate studies in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University. Her email address is Jessica.Deshler@mail.wvu.edu.This is an excerpt from Testimonios: Stories of Latinx and Hispanic Mathematicians (https://bookstore.ams.org/clrm-67).

Graphic without alt text

Article DOI: 10.1090/noti2755

Credits

Photo of Jessica M. Deshler is courtesy of Keri Schmidt at Keri’s Lens, https://www.kerislens.com.