EDGE Foundation

Last updated
EDGE Foundation
Established1998
Founders Sylvia Bozeman
Rhonda Hughes
Type 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
PurposeSupport for women pursuing careers in the mathematical sciences
President
 Ami Radunskaya
Vice President
 Ulrica Wilson
Secretary and Treasurer
 Talithia Williams
Sylvia Bozeman
Robert Bryant
Cecilia Conrad
Ingrid Daubechies
Lloyd Douglas
Raegan Higgins
Rhonda Hughes
Ellen Kirkman
Website EDGE Foundation

The EDGE Foundation (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education) is an organization which helps women get advanced degrees in mathematics. [1]

Contents

History

The EDGE program was launched in 1998 by Sylvia Bozeman and Rhonda Hughes to support female students pursuing graduate degrees in the mathematical sciences. [2] The first EDGE summer session was held at Bryn Mawr College in 1998 and the location alternated between Bryn Mawr and Spelman College until 2003. Since 2003 the summer program has been hosted by Pomona College, Florida A&M University, Harvey Mudd College, Mills College, New College of Florida, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina State University, Purdue University, and Texas Tech. [3]

In 2013, in response to an overwhelming push from former EDGE participants, the Sylvia Bozeman and Rhonda Hughes EDGE Foundation was established. The mission of this 501(c)(3) non-profit organization is to support and oversee all EDGE programming.

Purpose

The EDGE program is designed to offer comprehensive mentoring for women pursuing careers in the mathematical sciences. Activities are designed to provide ongoing support toward the academic development and research productivity at several critical stages, including entering graduate students, advanced graduate students, postdocs and early career mathematicians. [4] Along with its signature summer session, the Foundation supports an annual conference, mini-sabbaticals for research collaborations, regional research symposia, regional mentoring clusters, travel support for research talks, and other open-ended mentoring activities. The EDGE Summer Session is a four-week residential program for women entering graduate programs in the mathematical sciences. The workshops are immersion experiences that simulate the fast pace of studying graduate level mathematics. [5]

Sponsors

EDGE receives support from The National Science Foundation. [6] Other sponsors include: [7]

American Mathematical Society
Bryn Mawr College
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Cornell University
Henry Luce Foundation
National Security Agency
Pomona College
Spelman College
Springer Publishing
Texas Tech University
University of Michigan
University of Nebraska
University of Washington
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Impact and awards

In 2015 EDGE received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) [8] The citation for the award commented on the phenomenal success of this organization, and noted that at the time of the award over 200 women had participated in 16 EDGE summer sessions. Fifty-six women (of whom 46 percent are minorities) had completed Ph.D. programs, and over 65 were still working toward their Ph.D. Remarkably, in 2009, EDGE participants accounted for over 35 percent of all Ph.D.s granted to African-American women. [8]

In 2019, Karen Uhlenbeck became the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Abel Prize, which is considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics. On May 21, 2019, Uhlenbeck was presented the Abel Prize by King Harald of Norway, and in an interview with Ionica Smeets following the ceremony, Uhlenbeck announced that she will be donating half of her Abel Prize award to the EDGE program and the Institute for Advanced Study's Women and Mathematics (WAM) Program. [9] [10]

On April 11, 2015, the Association for Women in Mathematics presented their “A Mathematics Program that Makes a Difference” Award to EDGE and commended Sylvia Bozeman and Rhonda Hughes for their success in promoting diversity. The citation reads, in part:

Be it resolved that the American Mathematical Society and its Committee on the Profession recognize the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program for its significant efforts to increase the presence of women, with a special focus on women of color, in the upper ranks of mathematical scientists. [11]

In September 2019, the book A Celebration of the EDGE Program's Impact on the Mathematics Community and Beyond [12] (edited by Susan D'Agostino, Amy Buchman, Sarah Bryant, Michelle Craddock Guinn, and Leona Harris) will be published by Springer in their Association for Women in Mathematics Series. [13]

The Karen EDGE Fellowship Program

When Uhlenbeck won the Abel Prize she donated a large part of it to the EDGE Foundation, which subsequently set up the Karen EDGE Fellowship Program. [14] The Karen EDGE Fellows include:

Similarly named organization

This EDGE foundation should not be confused with the similarly named Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) project, an initiative of the United Nations Statistics Division that seeks to improve statistics associated with gender issues. [15] There is also a science and technology think tank and website named Edge Foundation, Inc. [16]

Related Research Articles

Abel Prize Norwegian international mathematics prize

The Abel Prize is awarded annually by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. It is named after the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) and directly modeled after the Nobel Prizes. It comes with a monetary award of 7.5 million Norwegian kroner (NOK).

Bryn Mawr College Liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, US

Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United States, and the Tri-College Consortium along with Haverford College and Swarthmore College. The college has an enrollment of about 1,350 undergraduate students and 450 graduate students. It was the first women's college to offer graduate education through a PhD.

Posse Foundation American college access organization

The Posse Foundation is a national nonprofit organization that provides scholarships for students to attend partner colleges and universities in the United States.

Karen Uhlenbeck American mathematician

Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck is an American mathematician and one of the founders of modern geometric analysis. She is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair. She is currently a distinguished visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University.

University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences

The College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin offers 10 Bachelor of Arts majors, 42 Bachelor of Science majors, and 20 graduate programs to more than 11,000 undergraduates and 1,400 graduate students. The college employs over 370 faculty. Many of the programs are consistently ranked in the top ten nationally, according to U.S. News & World Report (2019), including: Analytical Chemistry (4th), Applied Math (9th), Artificial Intelligence (8th), Computer Science (10th), Computing Systems (8th), Computing Theory (7th), Cosmology/Relativity/Gravity (10th), Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (6th), Mathematics Analysis (7th), Plasma Physics (3rd), Programming Language (8th), and Topology (8th). It was established in 1883.

Association for Women in Mathematics American professional society

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment of women and girls in the mathematical sciences. The AWM was founded in 1971 and incorporated in the state of Massachusetts. AWM has approximately 5200 members, including over 250 institutional members, such as colleges, universities, institutes, and mathematical societies. It offers numerous programs and workshops to mentor women and girls in the mathematical sciences. Much of AWM's work is supported through federal grants.

Sylvia D. Trimble Bozeman is an American mathematician and mathematics educator.

Rhonda Jo Hughes is an American mathematician, the Helen Herrmann Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College.

Cecilia Ann Conrad is the CEO of Lever for Change, emeritus professor of economics at Pomona College, and managing director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She formerly served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Pomona College. She currently oversees the foundation's MacArthur Fellows and 100&Change programs. Her research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status.

Fern Hunt American mathematician

Fern Yvette Hunt is an American mathematician known for her work in applied mathematics and mathematical biology.

Ellen Elizabeth Kirkman is professor of mathematics at Wake Forest University. Her research interests include noncommutative algebra, representation theory, and homological algebra.

Marguerite Lehr American mathematician

Marguerite Lehr was an American mathematician who studied algebraic geometry, humanism in mathematics, and mathematics education.

Zvezdelina Stankova Bulgarian mathematician

Zvezdelina Entcheva Stankova is a professor of mathematics at Mills College and a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the founder of the Berkeley Math Circle, and an expert in the combinatorial enumeration of permutations with forbidden patterns.

Ami Radunskaya American mathematician and musician

Ami Elizabeth Radunskaya is an American mathematician and musician. She is a professor of mathematics at Pomona College, where she specializes in dynamical systems and the applications of mathematics to medicine, such as the use of cellular automata to model drug delivery. In 2016 she was elected as the president of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM).

Ulrica Wilson is a mathematician specializing in the theory of noncommutative rings and in the combinatorics of matrices. She is an associate professor at Morehouse College, associate director of diversity and outreach at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), and a former vice president of the National Association of Mathematicians.

Alissa Crans American mathematician

Alissa Susan Crans is an American mathematician specializing in higher-dimensional algebra. She is a professor of mathematics at Loyola Marymount University, and the associate director of Project NExT, a program of the Mathematical Association of America to mentor post-doctoral mathematicians, statisticians, and mathematics teachers.

Leslie C. Cheng is an American mathematician specializing in harmonic analysis. She holds the Rachel C. Hale Chair in Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College.

Roselyn Elaine Williams is an American mathematician who is an Associate Professor and former chair of the mathematics department at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Her decades long involvement in the National Association of Mathematicians includes a 14 year term as secretary-treasurer.

Isabel Fothergill Smith was a geology professor from Greeley, Colorado. She studied geology at Bryn Mawr College under her mentor Florence Bascom. Smith published various articles as a student and a memoir on Bascom later during her retirement. Beginning her career as an associate professor of geology at Smith College, Isabel later became the first dean of Scripps College, a prestigious women's liberal arts college.

References

  1. ↑ Mathematics Programs That Make a Difference Notices of the American Mathematical Society Vol 54, Num 5, May 2007
  2. ↑ About the Foundation The EDGE program offers comprehensive mentoring for women pursuing careers in the mathematical sciences. EDGE activities are designed to provide ongoing support toward the academic development and research productivity at several critical stages in one's career - entering graduate students, advanced graduate students, postdocs and early career mathematicians. Along with its signature summer session, the EDGE Foundation supports an annual conference, mini-sabbaticals for research collaborations, regional research symposia, regional mentoring clusters, travel support for research talks, and other open-ended mentoring activities.
  3. ↑ Former Summer Session Host Institutions The EDGE Program
  4. ↑ Recruitment and Retention for Women and Historically Underrepresented Groups in Advanced Mathematics University of Nebraska at Lincoln, June 10th 2017
  5. ↑ Summer Program Gives Women in Graduate-Level Mathematics an EDGE by Amanda Castro-Crist, Texas Tech Today, June 27, 2018
  6. ↑ Division Of Mathematical Sciences Awards National Science Foundation Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE)
  7. ↑ the edge program: our sponsors
  8. 1 2 OSTP and NSF to honor 140 individuals and organizations with highest US award for teachers and mentors NSF News release: June 25, 2018
  9. ↑ EDGE to receive extraordinary gift from Abel Prize winner, Karen Uhlenbeck EDGE News, May 21, 2019
  10. ↑ Abel prize winners give millions to bring out minorities and women in academia By Martin Toft, Online newspaper for the University of Oslo, May 22, 2019 [in Norwegian]
  11. ↑ Bozeman and Hughes Receive Presidential Award Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education through the EDGE program
  12. ↑ A Celebration of the EDGE Program’s Impact on the Mathematics Community and Beyond Springer: Mathematics
  13. ↑ New & Forthcoming Titles Springer: Association for Women in Mathematics Series
  14. ↑ Gift from Uhlenbeck Funds Karen EDGE Fellowship Notices of the AMS, Vol 67, No 2, pp 228-230
  15. ↑ The Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) project United Nations
  16. ↑ Edge.org website
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