University of Mississippi Mathematics Group Earns National Award During Inaugural Year

Student organization recognized for high school outreach programming

by Marvis Herring

The Association for Women in Mathematics has honored the University of Mississippi with its 2024 Student Chapter Award for Community Outreach.

The award was presented Aug. 8 at the Mathematical Association of America‘s MathFest 2024 event in Indianapolis. It celebrates work the student organization completed in the spring during its first-ever Sonia Kovalevsky Day events and a research symposium.

Mathematics doctoral candidate Gauree Wathodkar founded the Ole Miss chapter of AWM during the 2023 fall semester. More than 100 student chapters are active nationwide, so landing the award after just one year is a source of pride, Wathodkar said.

“It happened in one year,” she said. “That is the happiest thing for a founder, right?

“I thought that I would graduate before something like this happened, but I got to see that, and the big reason is our team of officers.”

Wathodkar and her team invited Oxford-area high school students to campus on March 23 for Sonia Kovalevsky Day, named in honor of the groundbreaking mathematician. The day included a mix of interactive math activities, workshops and panels.

Ayla Gafni, the chapter’s faculty adviser, applauded Wathodkar and her team for giving attendees a new perspective about math.

“Giving high school students that perspective of what math really is – which is taking a problem that’s complex and that you don’t know how to solve and breaking it down into smaller problems that you do know how to solve – that kind of idea is applicable across all areas of life no matter what you want to go into,” said Gafni, an assistant professor of mathematics.

“If they see that is what math is about rather than just about getting the right answer or memorizing times tables then they might be more inclined to go into a math-oriented career.”

The award also recognized the AWM chapter for co-planning a research symposium in April with the university’s American Mathematical Society‘s graduate student chapter.

Undergraduate and graduate students from multiple departments, including economics, shared research presentations highlighting how they use math in their research. Researchers from two Memphis-area universities also participated.

The AWM chapter was awarded New Student Organization of the Year during the university’s 2023-24 Leadership and Engagement Awards, hosted by the Center for Inclusion and Cross Cultural Engagement and the Gertrude C. Ford Ole Miss Student Union.

“I’ve been really impressed with what they’ve done in the first year,” Gafni said. “Sometimes when you have a new organization, you just kind of get your feet wet the first year and go kind of slow, but they jumped right in.”