Tammy Kolda, SIAG/EDI Founding Chair, with input from the founding officers and others.
February 14, 2025
As a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) activity group, we provide a forum for members interested in exploring equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within the context of applied mathematics, computational science, and cross-disciplinary applications. A SIAM Activity Group (SIAG) is a grass-roots group that enables members to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge.
Most SIAGs have regular conferences, but ours does not. Instead, we host events at other SIAM meetings and online activities. Members are also connected via the SIAM Engage platform, enabling communications on topics, events, and activities of potential interest to the group.
Our broad goals are learning about EDI and celebrating and supporting underrepresented groups. The Rules of Procedure provide the detailed goals and governing principles for our group.
In the context of the SIAG, "EDI" is interpreted in the broadest sense, without political intonations.
Equity involves looking at the outcomes of a process (such as earning a degree in mathematics or being invited to speak at a meeting or serve as a journal editor) and seeing if the outcomes are uneven. It is a measuring stick, but not an objective. For instance, we know that there is gender inequity in SIAM because less than 25% of its membership is female as compared to half the population. This does not necessarily imply that SIAM is at fault, but it does indicate that something in the process may impact the representation of women. The harder work is identifying and addressing the causes of inequity.
Diversity involves engaging with multiple perspectives. Ensuring diversity with respect to underrepresented groups in a cornerstone of the SIAG-EDI mission, but the goals of diversity are much broader and important to SIAG-EDI. For instance, SIAM has long required that its conferences feature speakers from outside academia, in keeping with the theme of industrial mathematics in its name. Additionally, SIAM has insisted that its conference speakers are geographically dispersed, reflecting SIAM's international membership. Diversity can mean perspectives from more senior and more junior persons in a field. Diversity can mean inputs from other subfields of applied mathematics. Broadly speaking, creating diversity means going outside the usual cast of players. This can be challenging for many reasons, especially figuring out in which directions to extend!
Inclusion means finding ways for individuals, with all their uniqueness characteristics, to feel that participation in a community is welcome and valued. A community may mean a Ph.D. program, a research project team, attendees at a conference, or a professional society like SIAM. Part of fostering inclusion involves becoming aware of and addressing those actions which may inadvertently prevent full participation.
In the realm of applied mathematics (which we define very broadly to be inclusive of all fields represented by SIAM), several groups are statistically underrepresented in the United States. These include, but are not limited to, Black (African American/African Diaspora), Latino (Hispanic), Indigenous (American Indians), and Women. It is crucial to acknowledge that these groups are specific to the U.S. and the degree of representation can fluctuate across different global regions.
Beyond these specially identified U.S.-centric groups, there are many groups for whom we may not have specific data in applied mathematics but who are underrepresented in terms of having a voice in the field or facing bias and discrimination. We include underserved populations in this broad definition. A non-exhaustive list of groups that are underrepresented (or underserved) includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender (LGBQT+); first-generation college students; persecuted religious groups; persons with severe vision, hearing, or mobility challenges; and neurodivergent individuals. This definition is open-ended and contextual. It can vary by country, and it can vary depending on the subfield.
The aim of SIAG-EDI is to address underrepresentation within the field, ensuring that everyone with mathematical career interests can see and find a place for themselves.
Yes! Not every underrepresented group faces the same issues. Although we hope to find much in common with one another, there are specific issues within different constituencies. We support activities that focus on specific underrepresented groups as well as those focused on the full spectrum of underrepresented groups. In general, events should be open to all SIAG-EDI members even if the focus is on a specific underrepresented group.
Underrepresented groups are more likely to be isolated, to have a challenging time finding mentors with whom they can identify, and to face overt or implicit bias and discrimination. Dealing with these issues consumes extra time and energy, leaving less time for focusing on mathematics. Of course, any individual can face such issues, but these problems are much more prevalent in underrepresented groups.
Supporting refers to activities focused on providing encouragement, mentoring, support, and celebration of underrepresented groups. Many such activities existed before the formation of SIAG-EDI, such as SIAM's annual Workshop Celebrating Diversity. We are developing other activities such as mentoring forums, screenings of movies such as Journey of Black Mathematicians: A Study in Resilience (shown at AN24), and activities beyond the SIAM Annual Meeting. These activities may highlight achievements of overlooked mathematicians from our past, provide forums for underrepresented SIAM members to highlight their work, and create venues for advice and mentorship.
A major part of the mission of SIAG/EDI is to help everyone learn about the concepts of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Whether you are leading a research group, organizing a workshop, or leading a hiring team, we all face situations where we want to ensure we create environments where everyone can thrive. Whether or not you are from an underrepresented group, we all can benefit from learning more about the challenges. Moreover, quite a bit of statistical analysis and research has been done on these topics. Our hope is to provide a place where you have opportunities to learn.
Absolutely not! We can all identify with these struggles, and we welcome everyone who wants to offer support, receive encouragement, or merely learn.
Yes! No expertise in EDI is required. We welcome members who do not identify as underrepresented. We understand that there is debate about the best methods to ensure that mathematics is open to everyone, and we do not expect members of SIAG-EDI will have identical opinions.
We encourage our members to organize minisymposia to be sponsored by SIAG-EDI! Topics of interest are anything within the general spirit of equity, diversity, and inclusion. This could be something very technical (algorithmic fairness) or something entirely non-technical (career advice panel). For your session to be officially sponsored by SIAG-EDI, we ask you to merely notify the SIAG-EDI Program Chair.
In SIAM parlance, sponsorship means endorsement. This means we will work to have your event labeled as SIAG-EDI sponsored in the program, and we will advertise your session to our membership. Additionally, we will help to coordinate with any other proposed events at the same conference so that we avoid as much as possible having overlaps in programming.
A Conversation with Colleagues (CWC) is an online discussion forum of limited duration (3-6 months is typical), focused on some topic of interest to the group. It could be focused on reading a book or set of papers, discussions of best practices, preparation of a position or guidance white paper, etc.
SIAG-EDI has no role in setting SIAM policy. We are a grassroots organization aimed at fostering connections within our community and providing programming to educate the broader applied mathematics community on topics of interest to us. Indirectly, we hope that our members, especially those that take on responsibility within SIAG-EDI as officers or organizers of activities, will engage in leadership roles throughout SIAM.
The primary entities responsible for advising SIAM of EDI-related policies are the SIAM Vice President for EDI and the Diversity Advisory Committee (DAC).