'Math & Everything' Event Inspires the Next Generation of Women in STEM
More than 300 high-school students, teachers, and counselors visited campus Friday for the second annual “Math & Everything” event designed to help North Country girls envision a future for themselves in mathematics, statistics, and computer or data science majors and careers.
The event, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation distributed by the Mathematics Association of America, helps build the confidence of young women interested in STEM, and show them why a liberal arts university is the ideal place to study it. Next year, it will be renamed as the “Janet K. Langlois Math & Everything Event,” in memory of Trustee Emerita Jan Langlois ’71, whose husband made a generous gift to support the event going forward.
“It’s designed to attract more women to the mathematical sciences,” says Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Patti Frazer Lock, who helped organize it. Lock adds that studying STEM under a liberal arts purview at St. Lawrence has enormous benefits.
“In math departments at places like St. Lawrence, our focus is on teaching the undergraduates, not on our own research—even though we do that, too,” she says.
“We’re focused on how we can learn more about the world and ourselves by taking an intelligent, liberal-arts approach to the disciplines we teach,” she says, “and having students who know how to take that approach is essential in this world.”
Vice President of the SLU Women in Math and Computer Science Club McKayla Tyson ’27, a data science major who spoke to the students Friday, emphasized the importance of the Math & Everything event for young women who want to study math—or who, like McKayla when she was younger, don’t yet know they want to study math.
“This event is dear to my heart because it’s something I would have really benefited from when I was in high school, and I think it’s important to get high-school girls involved in math and confident in their abilities” she says, adding that she came to St. Lawrence thinking she would be a history major.
McKayla, who is now pursuing a philosophy minor, says she loves studying STEM at a liberal arts institution, where she can be exposed to other disciplines that interest her and complement her major.
“I think it’s awesome that I can pursue other interests here at St. Lawrence while still having that STEM degree under my belt,” she says. “I can have that holistic liberal arts experience and be involved in other disciplines while not dedicating my whole undergrad experience to one subject matter.”
The event kicked off with a breakfast reception followed by a warm welcome from Vice President of Enrollment Management Jonathan Kent ’04, then opening remarks by McKayla, followed by a keynote address on artificial intelligence by Associate Professor of Computer Science Lisa Torrey.
Afterwards, the high-schoolers split into groups for 19 different interactive sessions held by various faculty members on how math relates to certain topics—such as math and physics, math and the environment, math and sports, math and TV, and much more.
One of those sessions, taught by Charles A. Dana Professor of Mathematics Dan Look, dealt with Math & Epidemiology, where Look had students play a dice game similar to Dungeons and Dragons that demonstrated the mathematics behind how diseases spread.
