Women in the ((Hard) Social) Sciences Initiative

Background

The last decade or so has seen a fantastic push for increasing women's participation in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.  The same time period has seem a sharp shift in the prominence of the more quantitative social sciences.  Network science, big data, game theory, cognitive neuro-social science are just a few of the exciting areas that constitute the "where the action is" in the social sciences.

These subfields are also the ones in which women are most radically unrepresented.  One thing this translates into is fantastic opportunities for Mills women we could train to work in these areas.  Another thing is the chance for Mills women to have a real impact on the direction of these fields.

Although the effort to increase women's participation in the STEM fields is laudable in every way, it is arguable that more women in chemistry won't radically change the things chemists study.  By contrast, one COULD speculate that in the social sciences more women practicing in these cutting edge fields might have a significant impact on the kinds of problems we study as well as the methods we use to study them.

Proposal

Establish a program for the promotion of women's participation in the "hard" social sciences.  The program might be a track that cut across the existing social science majors with a few special seminars, a group of faculty advising the students, and a few new courses (including the "Mathematical Social Sciences" course Ryan piloted a few years back).  We'd have a budget for bringing to campus women and men social scientists doing the latest and coolest thing on the cutting edge.  We'd exploit Mills excellence in teaching mathematics to build a cohort of mathematically adept social science majors.  We'd build bridges to the interdisciplinary computer science masters program (see this post) to have our students connecting there.  One aspect of the program would build on "learn to code" efforts going on internationally.  We would make connections with tech firms in Silicon Valley that have branched out into social science work (Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc.).  We would make connections with emerging efforts at the GSB that would resonate with this.

Coursework

• Calculus, linear algebra, and probability/statistics
• Introduction to mathematical social science
• Introduction to economics
• Advanced introduction to social science
• Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
• Geographic Information Systems
• Learning to code
• Discrete math
• Agent models in the Social Sciences
• Introductory probability, econometrics
• Network analysis
• Modeling and simulation

Building the Pipeline

Graduate programs in these areas are keenly aware at the underrepresentation of women in their ranks.  Those of us in contact with practitioners at research universities will work to cultivate relationships in which Mills is the supplier of just the candidates they are looking for.  During the first several years of the program we will specifically strategize on the sorts of placements we want to make happen.

Expand Programs for Those with Weak Quantitative Skills

Issue

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for women to careers in engineering, science, and technology is weakness in quantitative skills. This weakness prevents them from taking gateway mathematics courses such as calculus, linear algebra, and discrete mathematics that are required for degrees in engineering, science, and technology.

Status Quo

Mills has a fantastic group of mathematics teachers- they have won national recognition--and the enrollments in our mathematics courses have doubled over the last five to six years, not only in the entry level courses, but also In the mid-level and upper division courses. But we do not offer a great variety of courses that reach out to women with weak quantitative skills and prepare them to pursue degrees in science. In fact, the only such course that we offer regularly is Precalculus, once a year, and that course has not been taught by a tenure-track member of our department since the 1980s.

The reason is that we have a very limited FTE in mathematics--about 3.5 FTE--and all of that FTE is used by the tenure-track faculty to teach the many service courses we offer--such as the three semester calculus sequences and linear algebra---and the core upper division mathematics courses for the majors---the real analysis sequence, the algebra sequence, and one upper division mathematics elective each semester.

So our program is very attractive for women who are already prepared quantitatively to pursue degrees in science, but thereis very little in the program that reaches out to women who are not prepared quantitatively; these women are left by the wayside. There is a huge pool of women out there--in high schools, in community colleges, and potential resumers-- who would like to pursue careers in science and technology if they could only strengthen their quantitative skills.

Proposal

Mills should develop a richer program of courses that reach out to women with weak quantitative skills.

What Would It Take

This would probably require  more FTE in mathematics.