Dear Interested,
With this newsletter we want to inform about interesting things in connection with topics of our Fachgruppe. Since the founding meeting in June, a lot has happened; we would like to inform you about this, but also point out future developments.
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Website & Email Address
The website of our Fachgruppe has been set up in the meantime — thank you, Büşra! — ; it can be found at:
https://diversity-math.org
and provides much worth knowing about our intention and motivation as well as information about the structure (especially the minutes of our founding meeting). We hope to be able to report there on many other aspects of equality, sustainability and diversity. Among other things, we will also reproduce the information from this newsletter there (e.g. links to the Open vhb course on diversity management listed below).
If you have any ideas for this, please contact us. This can be done either via the contact form on this website or directly via our email address:
diversity@mathematik.de
Survey
Based on an idea of the Fachgruppe, a survey on satisfaction in the working environment of mathematics at universities was started in July as part of a master’s thesis at the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Würzburg. The mathematics departments of German universities as well as mathematics-related institutions were asked to inform their employees about this anonymous survey. With almost one thousand participating questionnaires from more than sixty institutions, this survey was a great success — thank you very much for your participation!
The motivation for this stems from a recent interdisciplinary student survey conducted by the German Center for Higher Education and Science (DZ- HW). The current survey is intended to provide a subject-specific supplement for mathematics and to contextualize satisfaction in the German-speaking mathematics community also with regard to personality characteristics (diversity dimensions). The promising responses are currently being evaluated.
We will report on results in a later newsletter. In advance, however, we refer to the above-mentioned “Studierendenbefragung in Deutschland: 2021” of the DZHW:
https://www.dzhw.eu/pdf/ab_20/Soz22_Hauptbericht.pdf
Mini-Symposium at the annual DMV Conference
At this year’s DMV annual conference from September 25 to 28 in Ilmenau there will be a mini-symposium initiated by the Fachgruppe and organised by Nicola Oswald (Uni Würzburg) and Gudrun Thäter (KIT), entitled Social Dimensions of Mathematics. Below is the exciting program:
Monday, 2:00-4:00 p.m. (each with thirty-minute presentations)
- Carina Geldhauser (TU München & Munich Center for Machine Learning): Soziale Herkunft – Ein relevanter Diversity-Faktor in der Mathematik?
- Anja Fetzer (Uni Tübingen): Mathematikbezogene Lehrveranstaltungen zum Thema Gender und Diversity – Angebote an deutschen Universitäten und Vorstellung eines Praxisbeispiels
- Büşra Sert (DLR, Dresden): Die Deutsche Mathematiker*innen-Vereinigung?
- Kai Kortus & Sofia Raible (Uni Marburg): Math4VIP an introduction in nonvisual mathematics
Tuesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m. (each with twenty-minute presentations)
- Anna Ransiek & Anina Mischau (FU Berlin): Picture a Mathematician. Erklärungen für bestehende Geschlechterdisparitäten in einem mathematischen Exzellenzcluster
- Deborah Kant (Uni Hamburg): DMRCP – a network for the research on the diversity of mathematical research cultures and practices
- Anna Maria Hartkopf (FU Berlin): Wie gelingt Wissenschaftsjournalismus in Mathematik, Informatik und Physik? Forschung und Praxis im Experimentierlabor
- Panel discussion Soziale Dimensionen in der Mathematik mit u.a. Lara Gildehaus (Uni Paderborn), Nicola Oswald (Uni Würzburg), Gudrun Thäter (KIT).
The last two program items will also be accessible online, but we have not yet been informed about the access coordinates. Also, the program communicated above is not yet available on the official website (https: //www.tu-ilmenau.de/dmv2023/program). But this should change soon.
The mini-symposium on Mathematics and society – embedding models in discussions of societal challenges organized by Anina Mischau, Joshua Wiebe, and Sarah Wolf (all FU Berlin) is yet another recommended offering on our topic.
It would be great to see you in Ilmenau!
OPEN vhb course on Diversity Management
This access-free and free online offer by Prof. Dr. Edeltraud Botzum (TH Rosenheim) — in German language — is certainly interesting for many of us:
The course Diversity Management in Social Organisations provides an overview of how potentials that diversity brings with it can be used by social organisations. This includes an examination of the term diversity and an introduction to the concept of diversity management. The focus is on best practice examples from various social fields of work and concrete guidance on how diversity management can be implemented in one’s own organisation at various levels. It is aimed at all interested parties, students as well as professionals and managers working in social organisations.
Prof. Dr. Edeltraud Botzum
This is our translation of a passage from the website:
Another course of this type deals with “Resource-oriented work”.
Survey of Verbrauerschutzvereins Berlin/Brandenburg
In a Germany-wide survey of the employment situation at colleges and universities conducted in June, the Verbrauerschutzverein Berlin/Brandenburg (VSVBB) compiled sobering material. Details can be found on the website:
The University of Würzburg, for example, is in a respectable fourth place in Germany in terms of the proportion of female students, but is at the bottom of the list in terms of female deans and faculty heads.
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We will try to regularly send interesting information about topics of our Fachgruppe via email with such a newsletter. You are also welcome to spread this information and to win further interested people for our group! And of course let us know about interesting news for future newsletters!
Gudrun Thäter, Nicola Oswald and Jörn Steuding.
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