Valentina Arredondo Pimentel

“Having that experience of seeing what other people do and the support of other women going, ‘No, no, I had that experience too,’ … [and] you see how they get through it, I think that’s really crucial” said Professor Karrolyne Fogel.

For nearly three decades, Professor Karrolyne Fogel has taught various mathematics courses at California Lutheran University, and currently is the only female full-time faculty in the department.

“Mathematics was always kind of there, it was something you did. … I didn’t think about it seriously as something to study, like, in college or to do as a career until I … had a campus visit,” Fogel said.

When Fogel was in high school, she said she attended an overnight campus visit at Santa Clara University. She said she was partnered with a sophomore mathematics major and attended classes with her to experience life as a university student. Fogel said she ultimately attended college there and earned her undergraduate degree. 

“I came out of my undergrad and went into grad school [with a goal to teach], wanting to be a university faculty, but not completely opposed to working in an industry,” Fogel said. 

Through her graduate school fellowship, Fogel said she participated in an internship that lasted two summers, but ultimately realized she still “really wanted to teach.” 

Not long after finishing graduate school, Fogel said she began applying to universities to fulfill that goal. She said Cal Lutheran was one of her ideal schools, as she wanted to teach at a “small liberal arts institution, preferably religiously affiliated, preferably in Southern California.” Fogel said she counts herself lucky to have been awarded the position.

In her time at Cal Lutheran, Fogel said that the number of women in the math department has always “ebbed and flowed.” She said there was one point a few years after she started working at Cal Lutheran where the entire full-time department was women.

“We only have one woman full-time math professor here, and we would like that to change,” said Nathan Carlson, Math Department chair and professor. “It’s very important to me as chair and also, personally, to address historically marginalized groups in math. … I think collectively, the Math Department wants to make progress in that direction.”

Carlson said the Math Department as a whole is very conscious of issues that female students could face, both in the classroom and in future professions, considering signals from “math culture” can be uncomfortable for some.

“They get the signal that maybe they shouldn’t go on in mathematics, but maybe it’s okay to be a math teacher … rather than going to graduate school in math,” Carlson said. “In our department, we’re very conscious of that and try to mitigate that.”

Carlson said that historically, women in mathematics have always struggled with recognition in more research-based areas. Carlson said some women in the past went as far as to assume male pseudonyms in order to publish work that would have otherwise been ignored.

“There were women mathematicians working out and discovering wonderful things, and they faced barriers of even being recognized or allowed to do their work,” Carlson said. “It’s slowed down the pace of math research because of that. They were just sort of locked out of the field.”

While many of the former barriers Carlson described have changed, he said the effects of those attitudes can still appear in subtle ways. Fogel said there was a situation where she experienced this as a professor in the classroom. 

“I was co-teaching a class and I was commenting about the proof of the nature, then not too much longer into it, the student was like, ‘So as Dr. Carlson was saying,’ and it was the thing I had said, but got attributed to Dr. Carlson,” Fogel said.

Ashley Vaughn, a senior mathematics major who intends to become a math teacher once she graduates, said finally having a female professor for the first time this past fall semester brought new perspectives and new realizations. 

Having had all male math professors up to this point, Vaughn said being able to get to know Fogel and understand how she got to where she is today allowed herself to realize “a lot more” than she had before about women in mathematics.

“She’s always willing to talk. … Honestly, I can knock and if she’s [in her office], she’ll open the door and she’ll talk to me,” Vaughn said. “She’s willing to put that extra work in to have a relationship with all of the students.” 

Vaughn said her main goal going into a classroom is so that young women who want to pursue a career in math don’t feel isolated in high school.

“Follow your dream,” Vaughn said. “If you want to pursue some type of math field, you do that. It’s gonna be hard, and you’re gonna get doubted, but it definitely will be worth it in the end.”

Fogel said as a graduate student, she had the opportunity to go to a women in science program, which allowed her to meet other women who were further along in their studies. She said these women helped her see that the struggles she was facing weren’t just her own, but there are other people going through it as well.

“Network and talk to other people within the field because it gives you that broader perspective of what other people are going through,” Fogel said. “Having that experience of seeing what other people do and the support of other women going, ‘No, no, I had that experience too,’ … [and] you see how they get through it, I think that’s really crucial.”