SWIM - Women in Mathematics - Summer Workshop for High School Students

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

SWIM -- Women in Mathematics -- Summer Workshop for High School Students is a 10-day workshop seeking to retain talented female students, and to encourage them to pursue a career in science and mathematics, at the crucial transition point from high school to college. The SWIM program brings together talented students in an intense workshop in which they learn, earlier than is typically the case, advanced mathematical topics, and work on their own research project. It aims to showcase mathematics as a "living discipline", to stimulate the intellectual curiosity of the participants, and to convey enthusiasm for the subject. By bringing together as a group female high school students with a strong talent for mathematics, to study and work together, and introducing them to female role models at further stages in a mathematical career, the SWIM program encourages these students to consider such a mathematical career for themselves. Participants in the program are predominantly "rising seniors". They are recruited countrywide, and selected on the basis of their mathematical talent. The morning sessions of the workshop consist of two courses, which are more advanced and of a different nature than typical high school courses. In the afternoon, groups of two to three participants work together on small research projects based on the material of the courses. At the end of each afternoon all the participants meet for a "Women in Mathematics" seminar, introducing the participants to a variety of women who chose to pursue a career in mathematics, and discussing a wide range of issues with them. Throughout the workshop the participants interact with undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty of the Mathematics Department; they are housed in one of the colleges on campus and thus get a glimpse of life as an undergraduate student.