WiGGD 2020

Research Collaboration and Community Building in the Time of Corona

Jing Tao

This summer Jing Tao, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Presidential Professor in the University of Oklahoma Department of Mathematics, used her National Science Foundation CAREER Grant to fund the first in-person meeting of the “Women in Groups, Geometry, and Dynamics Research Retreat,” which was held during the first week of August. near Glacier National Park in Montana.

History

The idea of hosting a research retreat for junior women was conceived in 2019 by Tao and her colleagues, professors Tullia Dymarz (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Sara Maloni (University of Virginia), after meeting at an American Mathematical Society Sectional Meeting. All three early-career women mathematicians were recent recipients of the prestigious NSF CAREER Grant, a five year fellowship that includes outreach activities as one of its significant components. Setting up a brand-new conference or workshop is a lot of work for one person but with all three working together and pooling their grants they were be able to lay the framework for a recurring event that could be held multiple years in a row.

Their idea was inspired by similar conferences, such as “Women in Numbers,” held regularly at the Banff International Research Station. They decided to create teams that could work on research problems and, at the same time, offer support to each other. Every team had one or two team leaders plus two or three early-career mathematicians. Their aim was to develop positive interpersonal contacts because these connections improve the retention of talented women in fields like mathematics where women are still very underrepresented. Also unlike in the lab sciences, math graduate students often work alone on their thesis problem with guidance from their advisor. Once they graduate and move on to their postdoctoral work and tenure track jobs, it is important for them to find new projects and collaborators with whom to work. This isn’t always easy, especially for women who are often isolated at their institutions. This research retreat was designed specifically to address this problem.

After soliciting project proposals from senior women mathematicians in their field in fall 2019, the three organizers opened an application process to junior women mathematicians. They received over 50 applications. Five research teams were formed in early 2020, totaling 22 participants.

Virtual Meetings
The WiGGD 2020 Retreat was originally planned for the summer of 2020, and the original idea had been to have participants spend the six months leading up to the retreat reading background material and getting familiar with the suggested research problems. Once the pandemic hit, it became clear that the retreat would have to be postponed. Nevertheless, all of the research teams decided to continue meeting virtually to work on the research problems and to give each other support through the pandemic.

To keep the momentum going, all of the participants gathered together virtually in September 2020 for a one-day event to meet each other and learn about each other’s research. Each of the research teams also gave a presentation on their research project.

Retreat 2021
Finally, after a year of delay and after receiving their vaccinations, 17 of the WiGGD 2020 participants came together in person near the beautiful Glacier National Park in Montana for one week of intense research, networking, professional development and, of course, relaxation and fun. The retreat was held at Rising Wolf Ranch, a historic old ranch, originally built in 1928, located on the southern edge of Glacier National Park. Because of its remote location, internet access was spotty, and most mornings started with an “Internet Walk” down the road to a higher elevation where cell service was available. In the end, however, the participants agreed that not having reliable internet actually helped with the goals of the retreat; the research was more focused and the community building even stronger. During the day, the many porches and nooks the ranch had to offer provided ideal spots for the separate research teams to convene. In the evenings, after a delicious dinner cooked by the ranch staff, the participants would meet up for roundtable discussions and games. The theme of the retreat was building community, so a lot of time was spent talking about how to mitigate negative experiences by having strong support networks to rely on. The feedback received from the participants was overwhelmingly positive. The best validation came when one of the participants said that the most important thing she gained from the retreat was that she now has three more people (the other members of her research team) with whom she now feels comfortable working on math research.

The 5 Research Teams

Post-Retreat
While the retreat is officially over, research and community-building activities among the participants are going strong. A couple teams are already in the final phase of finishing up their manuscripts to submit for publication and all teams plan to continue meeting to complete their projects. A slack channel has been set up to continue professional development discussions and a website is in the works to consolidate resources that can be made available for other women and the math community at large. Some of the junior women themselves have even decided to organize a special conference session at the American Women in Mathematics annual meeting under the WiGGD banner.

The next edition of WiGGD Retreat is also in the works. The organizers plan to hold the next retreat in the winter this time so that the next set of participants can also benefit from having more time to meet over Zoom before attending a retreat. It turns out that the research teams really benefited from having the extra time to meet before coming together at a retreat, so in fact the pandemic positively reshaped how future retreats of this type will be held. Of course, Montana is covered in snow during the winter and Rising Wolf Ranch is closed for the season, but the organizers already have some other interesting locations in mind.

As for Tao, she is currently working on sponsoring one of the participants for an NSF Postgraduate Fellowship and is looking forward to the next iteration of WiGGD.

Written by Tullia Dymarz ( University of Wisconsin, Madison)