We are holding a series of workshops called "Girls Do The Maths". These aim to provide an overview to female year 12 students who are interested in mathematics and want information about possible career directions involving mathematics.

Our next event, on Tuesday 31st March, 2009, is another workshop for high school girls in Year 12. The application form is here. Watch this space for a draft timetable!

Our last event was another one-day workshop for high school girls in Year 12 on Friday, 27th April 2008. The participants came from schools all over Sydney. The highlights of the program were talks by

about their careers. As usual we we also had information sessions:

On top of all this we again had a few glimpses of university mathematics:

During the breaks for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea, the participants had the chance to talk to the various speakers as well as to some current UNSW mathematics undergraduates, Honours students and postgraduates.

Our participants left at the end of the day, tired but much more well-informed about the many different career paths that mathematics can lead to. Their feedback shows that they found the workshops very interesting and rewarding. We hope that it will help them to make decisions about their future.

Previously we have held three workshops, Wednesday 14 June in 2006, on Friday 6 May and Wednesday 26 October in 2005.

We have had some great talks from our invited speakers, including:

Some of the presentations and demonstrations from the days are available online on our resources page.

There were 16 participants from 10 schools (including our 2005 School of Mathematics and Statistics Teaching Fellow and Nagla Jebeile, maths consultant with the NSW Department of Education and Training).
Dr Ian Doust opened the afternoon with an official welcome, then A/Prof Jim Franklin led a discussion about careers in mathematics: what is a typical mathematics career and how do we help students to find out more? Points covered included

As a follow-up to this, Catherine Greenhill showed participants various on-line resources for mathematics careers and enrichment, both on the School of Mathematics and Statistics website and external links including the Australian Mathematics Society, the NOVA maths pages from the Australian Academy of Science and some American Mathematical Society webpages. The list of pages and links can be found here.
Inge Koch described the gender statistics here at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW which led to our Gender Equity grant proposal, and discussed our aims for the project and the workshops that we have run.
Adelle Coster chaired the final discussion which covered several points, including:

Informal discussion continued after the end of the meeting. The afternoon was certainly very useful and informative for us, and several participants told us that they had enjoyed the afternoon and found it interesting.