California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) Associate Professor of Mathematics Selenne Bañuelos, Ph.D., remembers walking into her college math classes as an undergraduate and seeing no other women of color as tenure track faculty nor Latinx women born in the U.S.
“The STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) world can be very lonely for women, especially for a woman of color,” Bañuelos said. “You can feel like you don’t fit in. At that moment, I had not met a female in academia — especially a woman with children.”
But a love for the complexity and possibilities of mathematics compelled her to keep going, and in late July, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) awarded Bañuelos one of the top awards in the nation for a university math professor.