Girls Plus Math Equal Fun: The Event at Hollins University Aimed to Show Practical Applications of Math.

By Marquita Brown, The Roanoke Times, Va.

Feb. 2–Eighth-grade girls from Botetourt and Roanoke counties recently spent a day learning about math.

They also had a good time.

“I didn’t think it would be this fun,” said Victoria Belcher, 13, a Glenvar Middle School student.

She and about 70 other girls spent the day having scavenger hunts, deciphering secret codes and making designs out of geometric shapes. They also played a “Jeopardy”-style game where all of the answers were math-related.

The activities were part of Hollins University’s Sonia Kovalevsky Mathematics Day, held on the campus Jan. 25.

The event aims to expose girls to practical applications of math, said Trish Hammer, an associate professor of mathematics who has organized the program, which began in 2004. It’s also a way to encourage girls to see how they can use their math skills in future careers, she said.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, girls show significantly less interest in mathematics by the time they enter eighth grade. By the time they are seniors in high school, only 48 percent of girls say they like math, according to the center.

At Glenvar Middle School, math teacher Ann Fajardo has about 35 students in her algebra and geometry classes. Only 11 of those students are girls.

Sydney Wells, one of Fajardo’s students, said other girls don’t take math because “they think it’s too hard.”

Some girls may shy away from math classes because they don’t want to study hard enough to learn the material, said Katelyn Grimes, 13.

Grimes said some math classes that she has taken only involved textbook work and lab activities. “It was so boring,” she said.

By the end of the day at Hollins, the girls had learned about the quadratic formula and the Pythagorean theorem — math tools some had not yet been taught. The Hollins workshop was fun because of the hands-on activities, Katelyn said. Victoria, Sydney and Katelyn said they particularly liked doing cryptographs.

“People get paid big bucks to do this stuff,” Fajardo told the girls while they worked on cryptographs.

By 2010, jobs in male-dominated fields of computer science, engineering and physics are expected to increase to 2.2 million, according to a 2004 report from the National Science Foundation.

It’s too early to know if the workshops have made a difference, Hammer said. The girls from previous years are now in high school. Soon they will have the option of taking additional math classes.

Hammer hopes they will.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, The Roanoke Times, Va.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.