“It was a clerical error,” Jennifer Bowen recalled as the catalyst for her mathematical journey. As an undergraduate student studying mathematics at Boston College, Bowen had taken a part-time job grading papers for the math department. She had enjoyed the subject since her high school geometry class, and her father was even a mathematics professor. However, she didn’t yet know that she was headed in the same direction.
At the start of each new semester, returning student workers needed to be rehired by the math department, along with new hires. However, at the start of her sophomore year, Bowen’s supervisors realized that Bowen hadn’t been rehired due to a technical error. All student grading spots had been taken for the semester, so Bowen had to find a new job all on her own. On the walk home from the department, Bowen passed the university’s football stadium, which was on the way to her residence hall. There, she saw a flier for one-on-one tutoring at Learning Resources for Student-Athletes. “It was like the universe speaking to me,” she said.
Jennifer Bowen
Shortly after that fateful moment, Bowen began work at Learning Resources, working individually with student-athletes on their math assignments. She quickly realized that she thrived on these personal interactions, choosing to stay with Learning Resources through the rest of her undergraduate career.
Bowen didn’t plan to continue tutoring as she began her first year as a Master’s student at The University of Virginia (UVA). Instead, she wanted to give herself all of the time she needed to devote to her studies. She had no idea what her schedule as a graduate student would look like, or what challenges she would face in this new environment. However, as her second year rolled around, Bowen quickly realized how much she had missed the interaction and community that came with tutoring. This desire to reconnect with other students drove Bowen to begin tutoring again, running study sessions for UVA football players, along with working one-on-one with other student-athletes.
“In math, we don’t actually share our narratives and our stories very often,” Bowen said, recalling what it was that she specifically enjoyed about the experience.
When I was working with student-athletes, the question wasn’t: ‘well, how do I do number five on the problem set?’ Instead, the conversation was: ‘I need to do problem five, but before I can, I was late to class for this reason, and I have this going on, and I’m dealing with an injury.’ It very much helped me to center a student’s story in how they do their work.
Currently working as a professor of mathematics at The College of Wooster, Bowen continues to take this approach in her teaching. She knows that her students have a lot going on, whether that be off-campus jobs, personal obligations, or simply other desires and interests outside of the classroom. Bearing all of this in mind, Bowen asks herself and her students: “How do their math courses fit into their narrative?”
This human-centered approach helped Bowen in her own mathematical journey as well, as challenges came her way. Following her Ph.D., Bowen started a tenure-track position at The College of Wooster after a two-year period as a visiting assistant professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. However, in 2013, six months before she went up for tenure, Bowen had her first child. This put her in a particularly difficult situation one day, when a member of the tenure committee had intended to observe Bowen’s teaching in the classroom. That day, Bowen’s daughter had fallen ill, but she didn’t feel that she could cancel on her superior due to a childcare issue. “I always remember that because I think of my junior colleagues, especially now with COVID, with all of the childcare issues and just life challenges. It’s ok to cancel, we can reschedule, and that’s ok,” she said.
This perspective helped her once again two years later, when she became a department chair and welcomed her second child all within the span of a few months. Bowen recalled the best advice she ever received, “There is no good time to have a baby.” It had been told to her in 1996, years before it was applicable to her life, but it taught her something important: “We are continuously adapting, narratives change, people change, circumstances change, and one has to be flexible, nimble, and ‘risky’.”
Reflecting on her mathematical journey, Bowen said that, above all, mathematicians need to be more willing to listen to people’s stories. “I really appreciate [the MAA Spotlight series] because I think this is the next place where mathematics needs to go,” she said. The people who do mathematics have always been and continue to be the favorite part of her mathematical and MAA community. That, and “Being able to tell people in the real world that I get to go to a thing called MathFest.”
MAA Spotlight
One of MAA’s core values is community. We are extremely grateful for the diverse and exceptional community of professionals, students, and math enthusiasts that comprise our organization. With our MAA Spotlight series, we highlight some of our members’ remarkable experiences, accomplishments, and stories.
