The Iowa State Department of Mathematics received one of the highest honors in the nation this year. The department was awarded the annual American Mathematical Society Award for an Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department.

“It is a major recognition, and this is one of the best awards a math department can win nationally,” said Clifford Bergman, mathematics professor and department chair.

The award was established in 2004 to be awarded to one program at a North American school each year, and initially carried a $1,200 prize with it.

The year after the University of Iowa received the award in 2008, the prize was anonymously endowed and the monetary prize increased to $5,000. The award cannot be received more than once by a department.

“It’s funny, we haven’t even had one minute of discussion about what we’re going to do with the prize money. We’re just so busy with getting through the semester right now,” Bergman said.

Bergman and associate diversity director Leslie Hogben said they considered this award student-centered, emphasizing the importance of diversity and retention of students on earning this honor.

“A big part of what we’re doing at Iowa State is aimed at diversity, really at all levels, but especially at the graduate-student level, because that’s where we have the most control,” Bergman said. “We don’t admit a student [into the grad program] unless we believe they’re going to succeed, and once we admit them we’re committed to doing everything we can to help.”

Bergman and Hogben noted various community and career-building opportunities as reasons for continued student success in the math department. These include an undergraduate lounge, individual desks for all graduate students in Carver Hall and quasi-learning community support networks like the Mathematicians of Color Alliance, EDGE and Co-EDGE, which help students make connections to other students and faculty throughout the department.

“This department has never been a weed-out department,” Hogben said.

Bergman said undergraduate and faculty diversity were important factors as well, but noted that recruiting professors is a slow business and the department has no specific control over which undergraduate students enroll as math majors.

Still, undergraduate enrollment in math has dramatically increased, and is up about 50 percent from five years ago.

“We’ve put in a whole lot of things to help all students, including support study groups, career workshops, mentoring clusters and having both faculty and graduate-student mentors,” Bergman said.

Hogben said she saw the effects of these efforts in action when she ran into an ISU alumnus in town.

“When he found out I was from the math department, he started absolutely raving about his experience at Iowa State,” Hogben said. “That would not have happened 10 years ago.”

Bergman said he would like to see the prize money from the award go toward a visible and lasting application in the department, and this award itself will hopefully continue to draw excellent undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty to Iowa State.