RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
Women’s Experiences Within the Communities of Practice of a Doctoral Mathematics Program: Insights Into Persistence
Page: 1227
For decades, women have consistently earned fewer than 30% of PhDs in mathematics in the United States each year. Advancement through a doctoral mathematics program can be viewed as a process of integration into the communities of practice within the department, and a student’s persistence (or attrition) is influenced by experiences that enhance or inhibit their participation in the activities of each community. In this preliminary report, I discuss the experiences of six women in a doctoral program and their participation in the coursework, research, and graduate teaching communities of practice in their departments. In contrast to past studies that propose that these communities of practice are mutually exclusive, my participants’ accounts illustrate some overlap between them.