Alberto Pedro Calderón, Victor Neumann-Lara, and Júlio César de Mello e Souza are just a few of the most famous Hispanic and Latino mathematicians in history. But recent data shows that White students now earn the majority (19,137) of degrees in Math & Statistics. Not only are male employees more likely to hold Math & Statistics degrees, but the average age of a person in the workforce with a degree in Math & Statistics is 44.7, and the most common degree type these workers hold is a Bachelors Degree.
A new National Science Foundation (NSF) hopes to change that.
Recently, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), one of two polytechnics in the California State University system, received a $1 million grant from the NSF to increase the number of underrepresented minorities pursuing PhDs in mathematics.
According to Cal Poly Pomona (CPP), Oscar Vega from Fresno State is the principal investigator (PI) on this project with co-PIs from San Francisco State, and from CPP mathematics and statistics.
The million-dollar award will fund scholarships for graduate students and CPP will provide even more scholarships, building on a partnership with the National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences, which has a mentoring program.
“A Ph.D. in math is valuable in business, industry, and government,” said one of the co-principal investigators from CPP mathematics and statistics. “Math is critical in fields such as software engineering, statistics, finance, and data science.”
According to Data USA, the average salary for Math & Statistics majors is $95,155 and the industry that employs the most Math & Statistics majors is Elementary & secondary schools, though the highest paying industry, by average wage, is Electric & gas, and other combinations.
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