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From: fester%math.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Single sex colleges and science programs
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Date: 15 Sep 88 02:35:49 GMT
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In article<5729@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>emory!vicki@gatech.edu(Vicki Powers) writes
>>Not true!   I know that Bryn Mawr has a (admittedly small) Ph.D program
>>in mathematics.  When I interviewed there for a job, they had one Ph.D
>>student.  Other departments have graduate programs as well.  I think
>>most good women's college's expect their professors to be active
>>researchers and thus any student who wanted advanced work would be able
>>to get it.

Lea Fester writes back
>If a college has a *tiny* graduate program, from the point of view of
>the *undergraduates* the college effectively has NO graduate program.
>The benefit of a graduate program is, as I said, that when you run out
>of undergraduate classes you can take graduate level classes - if the
>program is so small (e.g. one PhD candidate) there probably AREN'T
>any graduate level classes, and so effectively this advantage fails
>to exist.

    I graduated in math from Bryn Mawr in 1985.  What Lea says is
    correct so far.  There aren't any specifically designated graduate
    classes, though there are some classes whose material approaches
    graduate level.  (I went to math grad school, too.)  An under-
    graduate can't just slip into a graduate class the way they could
    at Berkeley, for example.

>Now regarding your last sentence, I unfortunately vehemently disagree.
>When I ran out of upper division math courses to take, I went around
>asking for someone to do an independent study class (called reading
>courses in some places) with me.  No one would.  And Wellesley College
>both considers itself, and is considered by most, to be a "good women's
>college."  The math department has its share of weak faculty, but it
>also has its share of good researchers.  This is not the issue.  The
>issue is VERY IMPORTANT, and I want to make sure I am not being too
>subtle for most of the parents out there reading this.  The issue is
>that if, on a fundamental level, the teachers believe that women cannot
>do mathematics, they will TEACH IT THAT WAY.  And that is why being at
>a coed school may be better.  The teachers there may well also
>believe that women can't do math, but THEY MUST TEACH TO EVERYONE,
>and the coursework therefore will be of the appropriate calibre.

    Here, I disagree.  At Bryn Mawr the teachers did believe that women
    could do mathematics at every level.  The faculty even has equal
    numbers of men and women.  And I believe you could have gotten your
    reading course at Bryn Mawr.  Yet, I feel obliged to admit that
    math majors at Bryn Mawr, while getting a solid background and
    not being taught down to, do not get the kind of mathematical
    education that Princeton, for example, provides its most motivated
    students, through graduate classes and other programs.

>It really hurts me to be having to say this, especially in public.  But
>it is true.  I almost feel like you can't win.  At a coed school you
>might get shafted in all the ways women traditionally are, (though you
>may not), and at a women's college you may get taught down to (though
>you may not), in which case you are even worse off than in case 1.

    Given the above scenario, what you need is a women's college that
    does not teach down to women, and I think there are some out there.

    My personal experience leads me to believe this is the best approach.
    I attended a large public high school, where women were discouraged
    from taking math to the point that the honors classes started out
    evenly balanced and three years later were 90% male.  I doubt that the
    women that stopped taking math then ever pursued it.  They were shut out
    of the field altogether.  Bryn Mawr had as many math majors as other
    schools its size, so at least it suceeded in getting larger numbers
    of women to a higher level of math than coed institutions manage.

    In fact, Bryn Mawr's all-female student body majors in equal numbers
    in the humanities (i.e. English, French, Classics) the social
    sciences (i.e. Sociology, Economics, Psychology) and physical sciences
    (i.e. Math, Physics, Chemistry).  I would be interested to learn of any
    other school, single-sex or coed, that could claim this balance in choice
    of major by its female students.

    But, of course, what should be done is to change the scenario Lea
    describes.  Women should be able to take advantages of the facilities
    that only large, coed schools now offer, without being shafted.

                                                 Karen Zukor

   e-mail:  zukor%logos.jpl.nasa.gov@hamlet.caltech.edu