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Race, Religion and Ethnicity
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This is an interview of
a Chinese woman full professor at a research university in California.
What was your position in China before you came to the United States?
I was a graduating senior at Zhejiang university.
Tell me a little bit about how you decided to come to
the United States for graduate school. Did you have any
concerns?
The main influence was one of the teachers. He had an idea of building a
strong math department at Zhejiang university.
Did he expect you to return after getting the doctoral degree here?
Yes, at the time when we just came to the
US. He realized it's not going to happen
after a year or two, since students sent out before me weren't going back. But
some people regularly go back to give lectures during the summer now.
Did you feel any sense of alienation in graduate school?
What did your professors and fellow students do to help?
The Chinese students there were helpful to the new comers. I got rides for
grocery shopping every week for the first year. Also we had five Chinese
students that went to my department at that year, we were
very close to each other.
Did you have difficulty with English, listening to professors,
teaching? I know that today your English is quite good.
How did you help yourself develop your English skills
and how did your department help you?
I had difficulty listening to the professors, so I took notes very
carefully and went through them afterwards. Sometimes I wrote down the wrong
word and had a lot of difficulty figuring out the meaning. I mostly did
tutoring in the Math lab for teaching which is not possible now. In the first
year we had six Chinese female studente share a three bedroom apartment
in the dorm, so I wasn't feeling lonely but was not learning
English. I had a host family, she was very nice and taught me some
English. I also took some English courses which helped a
little. My English really improved after I started lecturing,
and now also by reading to the kids.
What exactly is a host family?
It was a program run by the foreign students office, matching
students with a local
American family who would like to learn more about foreign culture and help
foreign students, usually get together every other month. Some get very
close.
When did you first feel comfortable with your English? Your presentations
are quite good.
Making presentations became easier after I realized that's part of my routine
job, not a big thing. I was very shy and never had a chance to make a
presentation before coming to US. People who come here now usually have very
good English.
Do you have any recommendations to Graduate Programs to help
their Chinese students feel comfortable in the United States?
Have on campus housing available for the first two years.
Have a Math lab option for the first year.
When you searched for jobs you had a two body problem to solve.
Did you also restrict your search to places you felt might be
more welcoming to Chinese people? Places where you could preserve
your culture easily?
When we searched for jobs we didn't make restrictions. Once we had
a choice we did prefer places where one would more welcoming to
Chinese people at a certain level.
How have you preserved your cultural identity through the years?
The kids are in Chinese school once a week for three hours
and we visit China. Chinese books, movies.
You have two children and successful career as a mathematician.
Many Chinese have help from their parents raising their children.
In what ways did your parents and inlaws help you with your children
through the years?
My mom (my dad passed away a long time ago) and inlaws have helped a lot
with my kids. They took turns helping us when my two kids were born by
coming all
the way from China and living with us. My mom stayed two years each time and
inlaws one year each time, the kids didn't start preschool until they were 2
years old. They babysitted the kids every weekday and whenever I came to
office, also helped with cooking and chores. This gave me the flexibility
of coming to the office whenever I needed (I like to work at the office).
I couldn't imagine how I could handle it without their help,
especially when the first one
was small, my husband was working at a different place and was doing weekly
commuting. I am very grateful to my Mom and inlaws' help.
I assume you also help your parents and inlaws as well in many ways.
Can you describe your obligations to them?
We are responsible for supporting my mom and in laws in every way,
including their health expense.
Do you feel your department is understanding when you need to miss
work to care for them when they are ill?
That hasn't happened yet.
Is there anyway your university could be more helpful regarding your
responsibilities towards your mother and inlaws? Do they provide
health insurance? Are there other benefits that might be helpful?
My university can insure one adult dependent which is very helpful to us since
my husband can insure himself.
How do you feel about your career as a mathematician?
I like being a mathematician after tenure.
How do your inlaws and mother feel about your career as a mathematician?
They feel proud that we are college professors.
Your husband has also played a major role in the upbringing
of your children. I've seen you at conferences taking turns
watching the children. Do you feel that the math community
understands the level of responsibility a father has towards
his children in Chinese culture?
In old Chinese culture, the wife should play the supporting role for
her husband's career. We equally support each other and I like that very
much. I feel a supporting husband is very important but I also don't want
him to make sacrifices. I look after the kids more but he is available
whenever he
can be. I still do not feel very comfortable bringing kids to math
conferences.
Would you feel more comfortable bringing them to conferences if daycare
was available?
Yes.
I mentioned earlier the possible alienation you may have felt
for being Chinese. Do you feel that you have ever suffered
discrimination in your teaching evaluations? If so, how did
you address this concern?
They will complain about my English for the rest of my life, but I do have
strong accent.
People have often said things to me like "why don't you invite the
Chinese guy from - University to speak" or "that Chinese speaker
from last year was good." Do you have any recommended responses
to this sort of inability to learn people's names? Is there a way
for Chinese mathematicians to help other mathematicians learn
their names?
To have an American middle name, which I still haven't done.
You have an excellent job and solved a two body problem. How did
you approach your interviews?
Several people helped, to whom we remain very grateful. The fact that the
department here accepts couples also helped. Maybe luck also played a role.
You mentioned that you like your career after tenure. Was there
something particularly stressful about the tenure process that
made you unhappy?
I was stressed in general, even though the departemnt is friendly and several
people very encouraging. At the time I was the only one untenured, moreover I
had a small kid. I didn't know what to expect, didn't feel like I could share
with anyone.
I've heard some appointments committees may assume that Asians cannot teach
well unless it explicitly mentions good teaching in their letters
of recommendations. Can you make any recommendations to other
Chinese mathematicians as to how to convince such committees that they can
teach well?
Provide all the supporting material,
prepare a good lecture for interview.
What can a department do to help keep a Chinese
mathematician in the department?
She could be made to feel welcome by including her in departmental
committees, casual conversation, lunches, invitations to dinner,
and encouraging annual reports.
My department has done all this for me.
posted on December 17, 2003
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On Sexuality
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I'm writing in this forum to contribute my voice as a mathematician,
a gay man, a transman, and as someone who was raised as a female in
the United States. In particular, my goals here are to let
transgendered people know that there other transgendered
people out there and to attempt to destigmatize transsexuality and
transgenderism by bringing it out in the open.
Let me skip my childhood but give some background about my personal life
leading up to graduate school. I went to the North Carolina School of
Science & Math for my junior and senior years of high school. I met some
wonderful friends there but I felt increasingly isolated with being
required to live in the girls' dormitory. I spent a lot of time discussing
this uncomfortable arrangement with the school counselor. There were other
issues during that time but the end result was depression. I left there
March of my senior year and moved in with a boy friend. With the pressure
of school and of trying to conform off of me, some of the depression
lifted. I won't go into too many details about the next few years but it
suffices to say that I continued to spend a lot of mental energy thinking
about society's rules and how I fit into society. After a few years of
regular income and relative stability I started to think about my future.
I knew that I wanted not just a bachelor's degree but a higher degree as
well. I decided I wanted a career that gave me some flexibility over my
daily schedule and a job that allowed me to wear clothing that was
comfortable for me, which for me meant no female dress clothes. Combining
that with my own personal conviction that I was intelligent and capable, I
decided I wanted to become a college professor.
So, I went to college. My first two years I attended a community college.
Then I transferred to a local four-year private college for women,
Meredith College. I liked the small size and the seriousness of the
students. I also thought that perhaps I just needed to develop some close
friendships with women and many of the confusing thoughts I had would go
away. I did well at Meredith but being around so many women only increased
my feelings of being different. I began to think that perhaps I was a
lesbian. After visiting many graduate schools, I chose University of
Kentucky. The department was one of the friendliest I had contacted and
after only a weekend visit I had already learned the location of a local
gay bar. There seemed to be an open and thriving gay culture there which
was important for my plans to "explore my sexuality".
I started graduate school in 1996. In the spring semester I went to a few
meetings of the student GLBT group, but my confusion was still there. I
didn't meet any women I was attracted to, and by talking to the lesbians
at the meetings it seemed I still had not found others with feelings like
mine. My attraction to men, however, was still strong, and I was confused
by this because if I was a lesbian, how could I still be attracted to men?
I realized that feeling masculine is not the same thing as being a
lesbian, but this realization did not explain my feelings. I didn't feel
attracted to straight men, but gay men were not interested in me. Bisexual
men saw me simply as a butch women and I had not met any women who seemed
right for me. Then one day a local transwoman came to speak to the GLBT
group about transgenderism. I was dumb-founded. Here was a woman sitting
across from me who was saying many of the things I had always felt but
that no one else had ever seemed to understand. I realized my feelings
were not about sexual orientation but gender identification.
I learned there was a small conference about transgenderism taking place
within driving distance. I went and instantly felt like I had found people
who could finally understand me. The feelings inside of me suddenly were
starting to make sense and I finally had a name for them. The realization
that my feelings had a name was somewhat a dual-edge sword. On one hand, I
felt elated that I had finally found "my people". On the other hand, I was
overwhelmed with the idea of the changes that seemed necessary. I was
unable to stop my fall into another depression.
At this point, I had passed the preliminary exams, passed the
language exam, and chosen an advisor. With these intense exams
and coursework completed, I had fewer ways to suppress my
explorations of my emotions through studying. Then my advisor wanted
me to wait another year before taking the qualifying exam. So, I felt
adrift in my studies and I could sense that my ability for deep
thought was not functioning properly. I started to withdraw from
friends and family, sometimes had panic attacks on campus, and upset
my office mates with fits of anger. My advisor was supporting me with a
research assistantship so I was blessed with not having to teach a
course during this time.
I began to see a therapist. I initially presented to the therapist
complaining about anger, depression, and told her that I thought perhaps
I had a body image problem. After a few sessions the words
"transgendered" and "transsexual" began to formally surface.
Explaining that she felt unqualified to help me further, she
suggested another therapist. At this point, there was a glitch, so
to speak, in the progression of things. My advisor had arranged for
me to work with a researcher in Idaho so I went away for three
months to live in Idaho, during which time I basically held on
day-to-day with the promise that my new therapist would be able to
help me when I returned. Without that lifeline, I might not have
survived those three months.
When I returned to Kentucky, the new therapist and I worked very
hard. In the meantime I slogged through my qualifying exam. After
about a year I felt confident enough in my decisions and
feelings to tell not only my close friends and my family, but also
my department chair, director of graduate studies, and advisor that I
was going to change my outward gender from female to male.
The chair, DGS, and my advisor were all extremely helpful. I had
been very worried that all the time I had spent in graduate school
would come to a crashing end, but I was happy to learn that they
would be accepting of the situation. In fact, I was told that I was
not the first transsexual mathematician they had known -- a pleasant
surprise for me for I really felt quite alone. (I have no idea who this
other trans* mathematician is, so if you're reading this, I'd enjoy
meeting you.)
After all the hard work with my therapist much of my depression had
lifted and I began to feel my ability to concentrate was returning.
There were some complications, of course. The registrar didn't
want to alter my records to reflect me as male. The DGS made
a few phone calls and helped me out. Also, because of discriminatory
Social Security rules, my SS information and my employment
information now did not match. (This was never resolved and I have
suspect it will cause problems in the future for me as well.)
Being able to finally express my full personality allowed me to be
able to continue my life. My brain and body were more fully
integrated and slowly my ability to think clearly and deeply was
being restored. My advisor stood beside me the entire time and has
always done his best to support me financially in terms of
conferences, fellowships, etc.
If my department had been unable to accept my transition, it would
have effectively ended my pursuit for a PhD in mathematics. This was
one possibility I had explored in therapy but I am very happy that I
was not forced to choose between my personal happiness and my interest
in mathematics. However, there was a period of about two years
when I was absorbed with the personal conflict between my outward and
inward genders which is "lost time" towards my doctoral degree. I wish
that I had been able to resolve these personal issues before starting
a graduate program, but we cannot go back and change time. There are
still transition related issues involving expensive surgeries
and governmental bureaucracies ill-equipped to deal fairly with
trans* people. My immediate career will definitely be affected by
these two items. I expect my future employment to be affected by
health insurance usability concerns, security clearances issues, and
potential confusion about my identity or past. I truly believe that
the decision to be "out" about being a transman will simplify my life.
I have no shame in who I am or my history and I believe that my unique
background of being raised as a female is a benefit.
My department provided support in many ways. Besides what I mentioned
earlier, the DGS assisted by being sure that the department was
appropriately notified about my change and assured me that the
"bathroom issue" would not be an issue for our department. The
chair graciously offered to help me as necessary. My advisor simply
stuck by me which was especially important to me. All departmental
members have made the transition to using male pronouns when speaking
about me and I've never been questioned in the restroom.
I believe the mathematics community can be more supportive by allowing
trans* people a way to distinguish themselves on standard forms. It
was always difficult for me to choose a category for sex or gender.
I think that including a way to indicate that someone identifies as
both male and female, neither male nor female, or another classification
altogether on forms where sex or gender is used for statistics or
classification could help transgendered people become more visible
and feel more accepted.
posted October 2, 2003 (for updates click here)
by Leigh Noble
noble@ms.uky.edu
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Extended Families
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When I first decided to pursue a doctorate in mathematics
it never crossed my mind that I would ever leave New York City.
This was where my parents and three sisters lived and where my
boyfriend's family lived as well. I had lived at home commuting
to college, and so had my older sister, and I thought my younger
sister was fairly adventurous for having gone all the way to nearby
Stony Brook for college. My father was a math professor at CUNY (Staten
Island)
and had completed his doctorate at Courant Institute. I was accepted
to MIT with a fellowship, but chose to take a fellowship at Courant
without even visiting Boston.
I don't regret my decision. My family and friends helped me survive
the qualifying exams and I'm not sure I would have obtained the PhD without
their support.
It was only at the beginning of my final year of graduate school that
I realised how hard it was to get a local job. I was expected to graduate in
May of 1996 and many of the graduates from May 1995 hadn't found an
academic job. I also learned that, unlike my father who had
found a tenure track job at CUNY without a postdoc, it was now
expected that one complete a postdoc or two before taking a tenure
track position at a four year college in the CUNY system.
I was determined to stay near my family and my boyfriend, whom I had been
dating for 7 years at that point. So I got a college guide and found
the addresses of every four year college within a 2 hour distance from New
York City. I applied to all these colleges using form letter applications
and applied to postdocs in nearby cities (Harvard, MIT, U Penn, Yale,
Stony Brook, Rutgers...). I focused a bit more on the postdocs, trying
to establish contacts at Stony Brook and Rutgers. I received a very promising
letter that I had been on the short list for a Benjamen Pierce postdoc
at Harvard as well as an invitation to speak at MIT, but did not get
job offers. I wonder sometimes if it would have been better not to
have mentioned to Stony Brook that I wanted to be near New York City;
despite a very close fit researchwise, I've never been offered
a position there.
Finally, in April, I was given a very promising preliminary telephone
interview at Trenton State College in New Jersey. They seemed sincerely
interested in the fact that I wanted to be near New York City but
they had a very high teaching load. My research career was saved by
Professor Shing Tung Yau, who came to my talk at MIT. He was surprised
when I told him I hadn't had a job offer yet. A week later I was offered
a one year position at Harvard and I took it.
The year I was in Boston I commuted back to New York City every weekend
to see my boyfriend and my family. Monday through Thursday I worked
in the office until 10 pm. I wish I had spent a bit more time on my
research, but I was going through the job search again and this time
applying a little further afield: 3-4 hours from New York City. I
learned more that year from Professor Yau's seminars than I'd learned
in a typical year at graduate school.
Again, after applying to 120 places this time, I only had two interviews.
Luckily both places offered me a job: Wellesley and Johns Hopkins.
Wellesley offered me a tenure track job just outside Boston with a high salary,
paid maternity leaves and excellent students. Hopkins offered me a three
year postdoc in Baltimore with a few colleagues close to my area of research
and also top students. I still wanted to get back to New York City
for a final tenure track position and thought applying from a postdoc
would look better than applying from a tenure track job. I thought it
would be easier to get letters from colleagues on my behalf and easier
to convince a school like CUNY that I was really interested in a position
if I wasn't coming from a top liberal arts college. While I would
have earned 100K more than I have the past 5 years had I taken the
Wellesley position, I don't regret my choice. I do dream occasionally
of those paid maternity leaves :).
My boyfriend came to Baltimore with me and we got married a year later.
We visitted our parents almost every weekend. I spent a year catching
up on research and started the search for a New York City job a year later.
This time I only applied to six jobs since I could remain at Hopkins for
another year. All six were tenure
track positions within an hour of New York City. I personalized
every application, contacted faculty in the departments whose fields were
close to mine, and described my teaching in ways that refered to the exact
courses offered at each school. Out of 6 jobs applied for, I had 2 interviews
and I took the first offer. It was a job at CUNY's Lehman College, a 4
year college in the Bronx with excellent researchers in my own field.
There was an opportunity for promotion to the graduate
faculty (which I have since been awarded) and released time from teaching
offered for grants/research.
Since taking the job at Lehman College, I've been invited to apply for
tenure track positions at two excellent departments but have politely
turned down the invitations. Neither of them have came from anywhere remotely
near New York City. Perhaps when I am older I may be more open to
positions further afield, but as a mother with young children being near
my parents and inlaws is unbeatable. My daughters see all four of their
grandparents at least once a week. Their grandparents have helped me raise
them: caring for them when they were too young for daycare, assisting me
when I was on bedrest during my second pregnancy, cooking dinners and picking
them up after preschool. My children are also close to three of their
greatgrandparents, their cousins and their aunts and uncles.
Since my husband is an only child, we expect that his parents will move in
with us when they
are too old to live on their own. If we stay near New York City, they
won't lose their friends when that time comes.
What could the departments/mathematicians do to support mathematicians
with extended families?
Since having a close extended family has more advantages than disadvantages
there is little support that mathematicians with extended families need
from their own department. However, I do think something can be done to
help mathematicians solve the problem of finding jobs near their families.
I think departments should give serious attention to candidates whose
cover letters mention a sincere desire to be near their location. My
department does this partly because it is easier to keep faculty who
have a desire to live in NYC despite the high cost of living. I think
this is fairly common in departments trying to fill tenure track and
tenured positions that might otherwise have some difficulty retaining
faculty. Faculty who grew up near a university can also provide better
role models for students, especially if the student body is largely
in state.
It is harder to argue why departments should consider such candidates more
seriously for postdoctoral positions. Clearly, it is of top priority to
hire postdocs whose research will match the department. Postdocs whose
fields are far from the fields of other members of the department will
miss the opportunity to expand their knowledge and develop their skills.
However, it would certainly help mathematicians with extended families
build research careers if departments would give them a bit of an edge.
I do believe that postdocs who are near their extended families will have
more help with their children and less difficulty adjusting socially.
Finally, I do wish that top departments would look to nearby
universities and colleges when considering hiring tenured full professors.
They could consider mathematicians who have moved up within one department
since they were young even if their research is not quite as
active as the research of candidates from higher ranked universities.
It is possible that their current positions have high
teaching and service requirements which have not allowed them to fully
develop their research careers. I believe there are quite a number of
women who are of the caliber
to be a member of a top department but have not accepted any offers
from more distant universities possibly because they have extended family
responsibilities related to their children, step children, aging parents
and grandchildren.
Perhaps the simplest thing departments can do for mathematicians with
extended families is to offer paid visiting memberships to local
mathematicians that have been attending their seminars. Such an offer
can often be negotiated into an unpaid leave of absense from their
own institutions. A perusal of the IAS visiting membership list
quickly reveals how many local mathematicians take advantage of these
positions.
posted July 30, 2003
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Loss
and Single Parenting
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The following is an interview of Marianne by Christina Sormani.
1) Please give me a brief description of where in your career you were when
your daughter was born and when you lost support for her upbringing and a
summary of where you are now.
I defended my dissertation in April 93. My daughter was born in July 93.
I got pregnant when I knew I had the results to start writing down my
thesis, my pregnancy was planned. By then I had a few minor papers and one
that contained the first part of my thesis, this was a good paper (the
paper in beroamericana).
In September 93 my partner was diagnosed with metastasized melanoma. He died
in September 94. Between my daughter's birth and his death I was mostly
busy caring for both of them, and didn't do research. I believe though that
the second paper from my thesis was written and submitted during that time,
but I don't remember well (the paper in Nonlinear Analysis), this was
another good one. After he died, I had a very hard time to get back on my
feet. I came back to life and research after a conference in Zakopane
(Poland) in June 95. I believe it was about a year later that I was able to
complete another paper (the one in Proceedings AMS). I spent the years
97-99 on several visiting and postdoc type positions, in Spain, Poland,
Argentina, US, Argentina, France and US. The length of those stays was
between 3 and 10 months each. Wherever I went, I took my daughter with me.
This was a huge effort, my daughter was between 3 and 6 years old, and had
to learn many languages and adjust to new preschools. I believe I made very
good use of that time, I had chosen the places where I stayed longer in
order to learn new techniques, and I am still profiting from that. My work
went slowly, partly because of constantly relocating with a small child,
but also because I was making my first steps in new techniques.
2) What aspect of your career was most affected when you first became a
single mother?
The heaviest thing was that I was two years completely out of research right
after my PhD: one with my daughter and her dad's illness, the other one
recovering from his death. During this time I had my hands full and was
getting very little sleep, and my daughter's father had been all the cheer
in my bones. I had no relatives in town, but that was probably good, I
needed to be left alone to recover. My close friends were basically busy
keeping me going. I had started off being competitive in my career, but
these years ate up all the head start I had. I never thought my partner
could die, I was not prepared for it at all.
Concerning the professional aspect, I will address this question farther
when answering 4).
Another difficult issue resulted from my need to have affordable day care
for my daughter very near my workplace. In order to have such a day care I
had to work full time at the School of Sciences, which was then undergoing
a lot of inner-political conflict. I don't thrive in a conflictive medium,
and I was offered to
work at the Argentinian Institute of Mathematics (which belongs to the
Argentinian Research Council), but then I would have needed a private day
care, and a lot of commuting between home and work. A the Institue,
professional mail and photocopies were payed for us, and there was a
clerical person who would TeX our papers. At the School of Sciences we had
none of this. During my work toward my dissertation I had worked at the
Institute, so I had to wean myself form the "pampered" life mathemticians
had there. I was longing for a quiet place to focus on my work, with easier
commuting logistics, more support, and where I could learn new things.
3) How did your department at the time help/offer to help?
I was given a low teaching load and some time to recover. It was a very
vulnerable time professionally for me, and positions extremely scarce in
Argentina then. I also lost support from one grant, as a consequence of
people pushing to pave the way for their own Ph.D. students, but I was
picked up by another grant. While some people took advantage of my
vulnerability, one senior researcher (Carlos Segovia) literally gave my
research plan a blank check, that is, signed to be responsible as
supervisor while the problem was completely out of the reach of the
techniques he used. He was the one that picked me up with his grant. Being
part of a grant was needed to pay for books to keep working (libraries are
poorest in Argentina), for photocopies and printer paper and ink, and for
travel money to local conferences. In spite of being very busy, he took
time to listen to my struggles with my new math problem, which I managed to
eventually solve. On this paper I worked in 95 and 96.
My parents helped me buy a notebook computer (they were expensive then in
Argentina), so I could work as well from home or in my office.
4) How could they have provided further support?
Well, I think I was in the crossfire of everybody protecting their own
recent PhD students seeking positions as assistant professors. Besides, I
had always been given complete freedom to choose my research problems,
which were in the area between classic free boundary problems and harmonic
analysis. There was the additional challenge to seek harmonic analytic or
potential theoretic results in a context in which the tools then known
wouldn't work (due to nonlinearity). It was a huge gamble. If I needed my
supervisors to bail me out they wouldn't have known how to do it. One of
them wouldn't stop squirming, since how their supervised ones do is one of
the things the research council evaluates them on. It played to my
advantage that in Argentina it is usual to keep working as a TA until you
find a position as an assistant professor, so I kept earning my living. I
should say here that research mathematicians work either for the research
council (CONICET) which has some analogues in the wealthier provinces, or
for some university. You can do both and keep the higher of the two
salaries, but not both salaries. The people I had professional contact with
all worked for both the research council and a university, most of them for
the University of Buenos Aires.
I can say I owe infinite gratitude to Prof. Segovia, and to Prof. Mario
Primicerio, from the University of Florence (he invited me to the meeting
in Zakopane I mentioned in 1). I literally came back to math after those
two years after having been invited to a Free Boundary Problems, Theory and
Applications conference, in Poland. Prof. Primicerio was in the organizing
committee. Without both of them I would never have come back to math. I
don't know if I ever thanked them enough. I knew Prof. Primicerio since
some time ago. In particular, in 91 I spent 3 months working in his group.
He made me give a talk, which I ended with the open problem I was working
on. He had me work on that problem with just the right person in the group,
who was just back from a postdoc under DiBenedetto (Daniele Andreucci). We
managed to solve the problem (against all odds), and it became the paper in
Iberoamericana (my first good paper). My thesis problem resulted from a
blend of my advisor's interest in very degenerate diffusions and Carlos
Kenig's and Bjorn Dahlberg's work on the porous media equation. Carlos
Kenig had visited Argentina and taught a short course on his work on PM
with Bjorn Dahlberg, and I managed to adapt his techniques, combined with
work by Benilan, Crandall, and Pierre, to a much more degenerate situation.
When I show my work I am often asked if I was a student of Kenig's. He
knows my work, including the problems I now work on, and has written
references for me. I owe him a lot too. Actually, it was very good for me
to show the results in my thesis in an international free boundary meeting
Buenos Aires when my daughter was a baby and my partner already ill. People
in my research field who attended that meeting wrote me references later,
when I looked for a job in the US and in Europe.
5) Were there any decisions you made that helped you careerwise?
I don't now how I made my decisions. I steer my life from the gut level, I
have always done that, and then hope to have the nerves to survive it, and
the energy and endurance to work hard enough for a long enough time to make
it work.
I never believed in making choices, and thought that the willingness to work
extremely hard should allow you to have both and not to have to trade in
things you really want. This position has since been thoroughly tested and
I touched the boundaries of what I can handle many times, but I'm still
here and still holding a job... I wouldn't have the nerves to recommend
this approach to others though :)... but neither would I have the heart to
tell anybody to give away half of their life for the sake of the other
half...
I had at some point the option to choose between a visiting posision in the
US, a position in a province university in Portugal, and a fellowship for
habilitation in Germany. While any of the three would have worked, I choose
the US. I consulted this choice with a female mathematician (Cora Sadosky).
I think the choice to come to the US was right, and that was her advice
too. I have the advantage to speak several languages, and am very good at
picking up new ones.
5') How did you deal with childcare?
As I said before, I had a head start with my thesis. So I didn't have much
trouble switching from depending purely on the research council to a full
time TA position at the University. The School of Sciences runs a day care
for the kids of full time personnel. I signed up early, to make sure my
baby-to-come would have a place.
5") Any help from your parents/friends?
My mother watched my daughter when I had to travel abroad for meetings. This
happened several times. In addition, I had 2 cats and one dog to watch, and
was living in a house, not as is more usual in Buenos Aires, in an
apartment.
You see, I always wanted it all... My mother also came during Julio's last
days and took B to day care and back, so I could stay with him.
My friend Andrea Solotar (and algebraist) has always been around, keeping an
eye on me (I was pretty worn out after my daughters' birth, and had very
heavy bleeding when I had my first period after her birth). Lo and behold,
Andrea rode the bus for an hour because I was almost unable to get up from
a chair without getting completely dizzy, and my house was being a mess...
She has also kept little B for two days or so when her dad died. At
this point I have trouble having precise recollections. It was very
intense, and still now I can't reconstruct it all.
My friend Sofia Rosemberg (herself a lawyer and psychotherapist) has
accompanied
my partner and me through his illness, we wouldn't have made it without her.
She does not do the job of accompanying the dying for anybody who needs it,
but has done it several times in the past for friends.
Once Gene Fabes (my advisor's advisor) came to Santa Fe (another town in
Argentina) to teach a mini course. I attended, and a graduate student of
Andrea's let B join her little son who had a babysitter. Another
colleague form Santa Fe housed B and me. I got an invitation for
postdoc with Gene Fabes, but when I was ready to go he had just passed
away.
6) Were any members of the math community encouraging to you?
What could the community have done to help further at that time.
Yes, and I named them above. I think it functioned more on an individual
basis. Also, most of the people who supported me are sort of "mathematical
relatives" (basically "descendants" of Antoni Zygmund and Alberto
Calderon). When I came to the US I met many more of them at conferences,
and was overwhelmed finding that our work still shows the connection, and
by their generosity acknowledging this. I never knew I was a member of a
bigger family :). When I came to the US on a visiting position, I was given
many opportunities to show my work in colloquia and seminars at different
schools. I am grateful to all the people who invited me, and to those that
housed B and me(B went everywhere but to one meeting with me),
so we wouldn't have hotel expenses. When I went to a week-long meeting at
Courant Institute Beth Bradley watched B, and Christina Sormani :)
housed me. Now that B is 10, when I travel while her school is in
session, she mostly stays with my Friend and neighbor Sara Fisher. I have
to say, almost everywhere I went I had nice neighbors, and made friends
with many of them.
Education wise, I owe to Hugo Aimar (who proposed the problem I worked on in
95, the paper in Poceedings AMS that I showed Gene Fabes in Santa Fe when I
had just finished it). I owe a whole lot to Pawel Strzelecki and Piotr
Hajlasz (both former students of Bogdan Bojarski) from the University of
Warsaw. I got motivated to work there after the meeting in Zakopane,
Poland, after which I restarted my research. I spent seven months with
them, on another impossible problem. Somehow they felt that geometric
measure theory was the right way to look at it, and got the right books in
my hands. While we never worked together, I owe to them my current work
tools, just like I owe the earlier ones to Carlos Kenig. I keep working on
that research line. The results from what I started under their guidance
are currently submitted, and further ones exist in the form of preprint and
partially typed and notes. I later spent half a year at Hopkins, with Joel
Spruck. During that time I worked on picking up as much as possible of his
intuition of movement of level surfaces, and the combined use of
differential geometry and PDEs. My current work combines the level set
approach with geometric measure theory.
Going back to your question above about the choices I made, I think that I
chose people to teach me tools that combine well. I choose by my taste, and
again it was a bet, but somehow the correct choice, made by instinct. Since
ever, and still now, I get to hear that I'm biting off more than I can
chew. Now, and then, I can still drop out tomorrow, I don't need to do it
today :), and that way I got some math done. I'm not good at living with
the awareness that I'm going for less because it's safer :). While this way
I work slowly, and get criticism for it, somehow all the mentors I ever had
encouraged me to follow my instinct. My dying partner kept telling me that
it's better to try and fail than to be at the end of your life and know
that you didn't dare trying. I think I gambled hard, and it's not over yet.
I had help. Somehow my taste was good. Somehow I managed to survive, so
far, the path I put myself on.
Currently, I owe a lot to my boyfriend. There is also a number of colleagues
that I feel appreciate me. This cheers me up a lot! Of course we want to
live up to the highest standards, even having a huge work burden being a
single parent...
7) Did you ever consider leaving mathematics at that time?
Then, and still now, a gazillion times. I know many female mathematicians
having young kids do. They told me so. It's one of the darkest hours,
professionally, but also personally.
8) At what point would you say that you recovered your ability to
concentrate on your work to your satisfaction and how did you enable
yourself to restart (if you did in fact have a break in being able to
concentrate)?
It probably was a question of having the energy and cheer, rather then the
ability to concentrate. It happened about two years after my daughter was
born, one year after my partner's death.
How did I enable myself... you will laugh, but I fell in love... and that
literally brought me back to life. Still, I have been completely alone for
almost seven years after my partner died. I'm not good at being alone, and
I hated it. I sometimes have barely been able to survive the stress. In
addition, during those years I spent time in Spain, France, Poland,
Argentina, three different schools in the US, while my daughter was between
3 and 7 years old. My daughter went to preschool, kindergarten, and
elementary school in 4 different languages. She picks up languages fast,
but unfortunately she later forgets them. In all her schools she was a good
student :).
I'm only now somewhat getting a grip on my research again, I hope it is not
too late. Concerning working to my satisfaction, I never got there, I'm
still not there. I feel somewhat more solid now, but that is all. I am very
uncomfortable a certain style frequent in our profession, by which some
people seem to assert their smartness by challenging others.
8') Did being a single mother influence your decision to move to the US?
What did? Has it influenced your choices locationwise since?
Well, it is good that the US has non discrimination policies (in my case
age, since all the things above slowed me down). Also salaries in the US
are better, and being a single mom is quite costly (from hiring people to
do handyman work, to house cleaning and day care). I like to live and work
in a tiniest town, because logistics are lighter, and there are only that
many hours in one day, and that much energy in my bones. Basically, being a
single mom made me look for jobs abroad, when I got too frustrated with
Argentina... I had no love to stay for... Also, the job market in Europe is
much tighter than in the US.
9) In the long term, what have been some of the most difficult aspects of
being a single mother careerwise since you came to the United States?
(travel?, conferences?, cost of living? Daycare?)
Money is an issue. Since I mostly take my daughter with me wherever I go, I
try to drive. I like to drive, and it is much cheaper. I found a very nice
after-school day care here, it is a children's museum, very educational,
with emphasis on diversity, run by a very special African American man.
Interestingly, it is crowded with faculty's children. It is exactly what I
would have dreamed of for my daughter. One hard thing is that not all
teachers allow her to do her work when we leave town ahead of time and she
has gotten lower grades this way on occasions. I only now dare to have her
play soccer, and I still have to see how I can handle the evenings, with
her homework, violin and soccer practice, dinner, my own work... and we got
a puppy this summer in addition...
Most people in my research area know my daughter by now, she is completely
unnoticeable during talks, and it's a long long time since anybody has made
a face for me showing up with her. It has happened in the past. In
particular the math conference center at Luminy (France) does not admit
children, on insurance reasons they say. Lo and behold, I had to miss a
conference this way. Years ago, at another conference I got that e-mail
asking if you have any dietary restrictions, disability, etc. I said well
we are all right but I have a little daughter... well it was not easy for
them to take that. Eventually we managed, they helped to locate a
babysitter (very expensive, but some talks I just wouldn't miss...).
B was 3 I think, then. I haven't had any difficulties in the US.
10) What are some ideas you would recommend to other single mother
mathematicians?
What so far has worked for me was always doing what I want. I don't know if
I'll make tenure, and I don't know how I survived it physically and
emotionally. I'm not sure I dare to recommend this modus operandi. I just
couldn't do anything else... On the practical side, these are my
suggestions: You need a notebook computer. You need dial up or other way to
work from home (dump the computer in your backpack, go home, plug it in,
keep working on your files). You need a cell phone (your land line will be
busy with dial-up...). It helps to be in a small place: I live five minutes
from campus. If I'm working at home, they know where I am and can have me
at school in no time if they need me.
You need a good day care. In general, I think day care is a good thing, it's
a whole social life and a whole variety of people to relate to for your
kids. Having only their close family to interact with is very confining and
puts a lot of pressure on kids. In the old times, kids were
community-raised in large families...
Raise your children social and nice to have around. This way they won't
irritate colleagues when you take them to meetings. Make a poker face when
showing up at meetings and talks with your child and a sack of toys. Now
that my daughter is 10 it comes easy to me, I guess I got a grip on it :).
Remember there's nothing wrong with being a woman, a mother, and a
mathematician. Childen and theorems are a normal part of your life, there's
nothing weird to it. It is also normal to have to be creative at juggling
both. As more women work in sciences, more kids will be around at meetings,
and that's OK.
11) What have been some of the more helpful things your departments and the
mathematics community at large have done to assist you?
More than departments I would say individual colleagues. I am still here
because of the people that believed in me, that backed research plans that
where very risky, that were and are patient with my slow timing and output
and unusual learning choices (who would go to Warsaw to learn Geometric
Measure Theory in 95-6?). And because of those that housed me, watched my
daughter, and carpooled me in Louisville and Baltimore before I re-learned
to drive and had a car. To Jacky Cresson (a mathematician), who helped us
switch subways to get to Charles De Gaulle coming from Besancon with all
the luggage (rolling staircases, stairs, etc, with a kid and all the
luggage). To Thomas, whose last name I forgot, and English teacher, who
picked us up at the Greyhound station in Louisville and took us to the
appartement we rented. To the management of that appartement, who in view
of the complications of sending a deposit from France reserved the
appartment just on my word by e-mail... Here, I borrowed the money for the
downpayment of my house :), it's of course payed back now.
12) In what ways could departments/universities and the math community
provide more support for single parents?
Ah, this is my question!
Several things we need:
Time!!! Handling all this is very time consuming, and exhausting, and we
aren't as fast at putting out theorems. Getting a grip on a new job also
doesn't come from one day to the next, it takes a while until you learned
to handle it all and have more of your brain free for math. Single parents
don't have a "wife" to run the household for them...
Emotional support!!! Letting us be without questioning the speed of our
output. Nothing is as damaging as colleagues who think you can't possibly
make it. Lots of emotional support!!! A competitive atmosphere is just a
killer. Unless they are perfectly fine letting you work at home... but does
it have to come to this?
It is highly nontrivial to be the only woman in a department, and a single
parent on top of it.
Don't let us do service!!!! Being well seasoned in human roller coaster
boundary conditions, most of us are good at working with people and have a
huge sense of solidarity. In addition, service makes you feel good right
away (immediate payoff!!!). But it eats up your scarce time, and some
colleagues will never value it, even when being good at it takes skills
that are unfortunately infrequent in our profession (I guess that's why
even responsible chairs tend to burden with service those that do a good
job at it, and make the department look good).
Fairness should include the awareness that a middle aged single childless
person has more time for math than a single parent of young kids.
Keep it flexible. Sometimes rules make things harder. It helps to just
negotiate one's needs and the department's needs in good faith, mostly it's
easy to match them up. One has to help in not being rigid, and it helps to
be lucky to have a chair that appreciates one's being cooperative and isn't
rigid either. And there's the old wisdom that if you aren't a pain a lot of
people won't be a pain to you either...
Keep a sense of humour if the logistics becomes complicated and something
goes out of line. If you take it in a stride, people around you likely will
too.
13) Any other comments?
Probably other behind-the-scenes ingredients to how things went were my
(very hispanic) notion that children are a natural part of one's life and
it's perfectly fine to sometimes take them along to work, and to work at
home while they are around, and to take them with you everywhere you go,
and to teach them to be nice and social and keep quiet during talks or
review sessions or when you give an exam. I have accordingly also had
students take finals with their little kids in the room, and helped keep
the kid busy while the mother was writing. Another vital ingredient is to
do what you want (rather than limit your life because it's safer). Without
some joy you wouldn't be able to cope and take on all the work and the
stress. (That's how I bought a house and have a cat and a dog and apple
trees without having tenure...). I believe in the value of having a rich
live. If we are to die tomorrow... wouldn't it be a sorry thing to check
out having only a few theorems to account for our time on this earth, and
missing out on all the rest??
posted December 14, 2003
by Marianne Korten
marianne@math.ksu.edu
PS: As of the beginning of 2006, I have just been tenured, and I have my
first NSF grant. I
had an 18 months EPSCoR-NSF grant somewhat earlier. I have just been invited
to speak at
the Spring 2007 Midwest PDE Seminar. To all who are dealing with very
difficult situations, I'd like
to say, stick to your daily work, eventually you see it accumulate and
harvest time comes. I am
also very pleased to see that I got away following my taste in mathematics
in spite of the riskiness
of the problems. My daughter just turned 13, and is doing very well, in
spite of teenagerhood.
Keep the good work up, believe in yourselves, and in your right to both have
a life and do research.
Don't be afraid of very hard work.
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Parenting Children with Special Needs
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The following is an e-interview of Mary Elizabeth Bradley
conducted by Christina Sormani in September 2003.
Mary Elizabeth Bradley is an Associate Professor at the
University of Louisville. She specializes in
partial differential equations and mathematical modelling
and has 19 published papers. She received
her doctorate in 1991 at the University of Virginia,
She obtained
her tenure-track position at UofL directly out of graduate school
and, except for a leave of absence 1994-1997, has remained there.
During the years 1994-1997, she visited at MIT and Brown University.
1) Can you give a brief description of your career/research/family
life before your child was diagnosed with Down Syndrome?
Before R's birth, I had one child (a typical child) that is
2.5 yrs older than R. Basically, I found maternity and nursing a huge
drain on me and on my career (well worth it, I might add!) and as
such, I did very little research during my pregnancy with N. and the
year following. I had just started getting back into the swing of
research when I found out that I was pregnant with R. (This wasn't a
planned pregnancy, but it wasn't an unwanted pregnancy either). So,
the state of my career was a bit of a roller coaster, but with a
little up-hill momentum. An important factor was my having already
and recently obtained tenure. I had just begun learning a new field,
which was quite a jump from my thesis/tenure work. It was not a good
time for me to take on a new baby, especially one with special needs,
if career is the criterion for such choices. I still had no papers in
the new field and had just submitted my last paper in my former
research area during my pregnancy with R. (Research has always been
the toughest part of my job, so having a major interruption at a
crucial time such as it was in getting my footing in a substantially
new area has played a critical role in my current state of research.)
2) Did you take off time from work to help you deal with the news?
Did you focus on certain aspects of work rather than other aspects to
help keep yourself on track or distract yourself? Was your department
supportive of your choices?
I got a hint that R. might have D.S. from a blood test at about 16
weeks gestation. Follow-up (without amnio) indicated a perfectly
formed baby with a perfectly formed 4-chamber heart. So, I put D.S.
out of my mind at that point.
R. was diagnosed on the table. In fact, I never held her before the
news arrived. R. came in December, so I had already planned my
maternity leave. This was hard (let me stress HARD) to
get the University to arrange. There was no real policy in place.
So, I relied on the family leave act to get 12 consecutive weeks off
(6 without pay). The University then decided that they would not
start the clock at R's birth, but at the beginning of the spring term.
(Everyone gets the holiday week off, so this was really the only fair
way. But legally they could have started the clock on my 12 weeks the
day R. was born.) Because of this set-up, I already had the spring
term off from teaching. I was supposed to return to work in full
research mode on April 1, 2001. In fact, I did only a small amount of
work throughout the entire spring term. I helped with hiring (that
started at about 4 weeks postpartum) and also went into the office
about once a week to work with my graduate student. Other than this,
I did not do much work until I returned to classes in the fall.
The department was really fine with everything. Our chair was
wonderful and helpful.
No one on faculty expected me to come in. They all knew I had my
hands full with R.
Something that needs to be understood is that R. was a very needy
baby. There was no "distracting" myself, except that her heart
condition distracted me from the D.S. For 10 months I strove toward
R's survival. I cannot tell you how many doctors visits I took her
to during those early months. Her heart condition was sufficiently
severe that she failed to thrive. For 2 months we watched her weight,
every calorie expended -- even how much energy it took to nurse vs.
bottle feed -- before she even regained her birth weight. On top of
everything else, she had reflux, so that she threw up about 1/2 to 1
ounce per feeding. It was a nightmare, counting all the calories that
went in, how many were thrown up, how many were expended on the
"non-essentials" like baths. She was only bathed about once per week
just to conserve calories. We purchased expensive additives (not
covered by insurance) to boost her caloric intake per ounce of feed.
I pumped and "breast-fed" via bottle to conserve calories used during
feeding. Her heart condition caused her literally to break a sweat
while nursing. She had to work her heart so hard just to do existence
things. We did all kinds of things to keep her from crying so that
she would use as few calories as possible. I remember at one point,
just before she started gaining weight that I literally thought I was
losing my mind over the whole thing. I reacted as if it was a
personal insult when she vomited. It was a very crazy time, one that
even as I recall it now is a painful blur.
3) What helped you through this difficult time? Religion? Your
husband? Was anyone in the math community especially helpful? Did
your university provide counseling services?
Probably the most helpful
part of dealing with the diagnosis of the D.S. was the diagnosis of
the heart condition. Many of the symptoms of D.S. in an infant could
also have been symptoms of her heart problem. For 10 months, I acted
and practically believed that all of her problems were her heart, and
if only we got her to survive through the surgery, she would be okay.
This denial was an important part of getting over the hump with D.S.
By the time I had discovered what part of Rs problems were D.S. vs.
heart defects, I had already been living with the reality of D.S. for
over a year. Gradually, as R. recovered from her heart surgery, I
began to realize what D.S. was going to mean to us as a family.
Consequently, I did not have a one-time cruel blow to recover from.
The pain and grieving of D.S. was spread out over a longer time period
than that.
I have a strong faith, too, and this helped. However, going
through this time I was very lonely. We were just beginning to attend
a new church, so we as a family were not yet well established there.
Consequently, there was limited support there. They were great about
rallying with food & stuff during the surgery, though, which was an
awesome help!
My husband and I differed greatly in the way we dealt with the grief
over her diagnosis. This put a strain on our marriage. We both hurt,
and yet felt misunderstood by each other, so that we were not the
mutual comfort to each other than one might expect. In fact, going
through birth, failing to thrive, countless doctor's visits, etc., I
began to see why so many marriages involving the birth of special
needs children end in divorce. I'm only guessing here, but from what
I've seen of special needs families, the divorce rate is about double
what it is in normal society. Our marriage was (and is) strong very
strong yet I still felt so isolated during that first year in R.'s
life. We were grieving and dealing with things on separate tracks.
This was a huge shock to me. I always had believed that if we had to
go through something like this we would be "in it together": sharing
each others burdens, being tender and kind. I never expected that his
means of dealing with his grief would be in conflict with my way of
grieving |