Math girls

Mitrea.
Photo by Jack Mellott.

For Irina Mitrea, there was never a gender gap in math and science classes as she was growing up. With the support of her older brother, whose career is in mathematics, and the nurturing environment of a classroom full of scholarly peers, Mitrea never felt isolated in her enjoyment of the language of science. It wasn’t until the native Romanian came to the United States to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota that she found herself to be among a handful of women in a classroom full of men.

“In Romania, once you get to high school you have to pass an examination,” explains Mitrea, who is now an assistant professor of mathematics at U.Va. “I always did well in the sciences. This always assured me a place into classes where most kids are interested in sciences.”

American girls aren’t so lucky. A recent report on CNN pointed out that, even after 15 years of effort to alter the gender balance in mathematics classrooms, girls are still underrepresented. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, while two-thirds of middle school girls report an affinity for math and science, by high school, only one-third of students in advanced placement physics classes are girls. At the college level, women represent fewer than one-fifth of engineering students.

But Mitrea is out to change that. Armed with a five-year $407,463 National Science Foundation Career Grant, she intends to pursue a number of programs aimed at eliminating gender inequities in mathematics and science.

“Traditionally, mathematics is a male-dominated field,” Mitrea explains. “Women have come a long way, but there is much to be done to level the playing field and eliminate these stereotypes that a woman is not capable of doing mathematics. The general idea that I have is that equal opportunities yield similar performances. So we want to make sure that women feel encouraged to fight the typical stereotypes and actually express their interest in mathematics if they have one.”

Mitrea’s efforts begin this summer with a weeklong program designed to fan the flames of enthusiasm young women might feel for math. Her “Girls and Mathematics” program brings up to 20 middle school girls together with successful female math majors to play with problems that challenge the young scholars to think outside the box. The program, which is offered at no cost to the participants, also gives girls a chance to mingle with women for whom mathematics is “all that.”

“It’s important for young women to have a support group, to know there are other kids their age who are interested in mathematics,” Mitrea says. Working together in groups of four or five, all the girls will get lots of individual attention and guidance so no one feels intimidated.

Mitrea’s NSF grant also allows her to offer a range of activities designed to eliminate gender inequities in math and science. Among these is a lecture series aimed at popularizing mathematics among college students who may not yet have considered careers in math and science. Topping the list of speakers is Steven Strogatz, a popular mathematician from Cornell University whose trade book “Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life” makes science seem sexy as he relates the unlikely synchronicity of ordinary events to the unifying power of mathematics. 

Another program invites graduate students from universities across the country to come to U.Va. to talk about their research. This seminar series more directly targets members of the mathematics community. Mitrea’s goal is to give these experts of the future some exposure among their peers and the opportunity to develop presentation skills.

“I greatly benefited from outreach programs myself,” Mitrea explains. “I learned firsthand over the years the value of the role model. This is precisely what I have in mind: to provide girls with strong role models that can shape how they view mathematics as a profession. These are very delicate moments, and guidance, in my experience, makes a critical difference.”