During the 1990s
the Department of Mathematics at UNL
had done a lot of work in improving its program
especially with regard to female graduate students
and became a national model.
That led to the department being recognized
with the Presidential Award for Excellence in
Science, Math, and Engineering Mentoring in 1998.
That award came with a $10,000 grant
from the National Science Foundation and we were able
to use that grant to leverage additional support
from the University to hold our first conference.
The mission of NCUWM is to encourage women
to go on in graduate studies in math or a related field
or even just a mathematical career
but also to give them the tools
so that they can be successful if they do so.
When we first started the conference, a lot of women
just did not see graduate school as a possibility.
And opening their eyes to the idea that
there were lots of women doing mathematics
and that graduate school was indeed
a real possibility for them
was a pretty powerful experience.
The mathematics at NCUWM—
we have presentations by the plenaries
but we also have a large number of student presentations on their research.
And this can be research that they've done
in an REU or with a faculty member on
topics such as graph theory or statistics
or even the mathematics of gerrymandering.
One of the things that continuously impresses me
is the caliber of the student presentations at this conference
and how the undergrads themselves
serve as role models to their own peers.
When we started this conference
it was one of the first conferences focused on
undergraduate research and specifically designed
for undergraduates in mathematics in the country.
I think there were about 50 participants in the first conference
and a third of those participants gave talks.
The conference has now grown to about
250 undergraduate participants a year
and about half are now presenting their own research during the conference
either in talks or in poster presentations.
In choosing plenaries, we have two or three a year
and we usually like to have them representing mathematics in industry
as well as academia
and so we look for people who are not only pioneers in their fields
but we also look for women who have a history of
mentoring other women or underrepresented minorities in STEM
and/or who have made contributions to mathematical education.
Our hope is that among our plenaries and panelists
each undergrad can see one role model and say
"Hey, I'm like that person and if they could do it, I can do it too."
We tell the participants every year to look around
because if they choose to stay in mathematics
the people in that room with them at the conference
will be their colleagues for the rest of their lives.