by Janet Bond Wood

Just as a poet apprehends reality with poems, or a painter tackles a blank canvas to portray her particular vision, so Anna Nagurney comprehends reality and translates what she sees into mathematical models. In her hands, it is an effort as creative, demanding, and precise as a work of art. The models Professor Nagurney creates, and the algorithms she writes to solve those models, are used to explore networks and answer questions about how to make financial, transportation and environmental networks work better. To her, networks are dynamic and multi-dimensional.

The daughter of an engineer and a licensed pharmacist, Professor Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Management in the Isenberg School of Management, was encouraged to pursue science for as long as she can remember. Hers is not the story we read of a young girl being discouraged, in various ways, from pursuing studies in math, engineering, physics, or other technical fields. She recalls her seventh grade teacher saying, “Anna, you will be a professor one day.” It is hard to imagine discouraging Professor Nagurney from any of her many interests: she has an aspect that seems lighter than air combined with a tensile strength of steel.
School of Management’s Anna Nagurney negotiates the disciplines of transportation, engineering, mathematics and computer science, and advocates for women in the hard sciences.

It is hard to discourage someone who loves her work so much that she rises before dawn to capture variables for her models and the next step for her algorithms. Nagurney has been tested, however, working as she does in a “man’s” field — transportation, mathematics, computer science, even management science. In fact, the singularity of her experience as a woman moving through these disciplines has made her an advocate for women in science — especially the hard sciences.

Nagurney’s thesis advisor was the only female professor in either the Division of Applied Mathematics or the School of Engineering at Brown University. When Nagurney became a full-time professor at UMass, teaching in the Departments of General Business & Finance, less than 10% of the full-time faculty in the fields of civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering, geology, and physics were women, according to National Science Foundation statistics. Professor Nagurney uses these statistics frequently to advocate for increased participation by women in the scientific disciplines.

There is no innate difference in the ability of boys or girls to learn science and math, Nagurney believes. There does develop, however, a perception of ability. Beginning in the eighth grade, girls start to underestimate their ability, resulting in a loss of interest in science and math. In her essay published in Sweden in 1998, entitled Science Technology and Society: University Leadership Today and for the Twenty-First Century, Professor Nagurney points out that there are also fewer female teachers in science and math to serve as role models for girls in high school; this environmental factor supports the girls’ perceptions about their abilities. Success in science and engineering requires not only an interest in the fields, but also intense study, and because many girls are not taking the advanced courses either in high school or in college, their future options for doctorate level work are limited.

The numbers of women in nontraditional science disciplines, mathematics, and engineering are slowly increasing, notes Nagurney, but true demographic changes require extensive support from institutions. Girls need to see women teaching hard sciences and engineering in high school and in college. Girls interested in science need to be encouraged, their abilities recognized.

Many problems face women in early phases of an academic career, Nagurney notes, and one significant issue that needs institutional recognition is that of childbirth and child rearing. Where there are programs that recognize this issue and support a women’s choice, they have paid off handsomely. Professor Nagurney notes a need for good daycare, such as is provided in Sweden; a “stop-the-clock” tenure policy that allows time-off for maternity leave at universities such as Stanford; and the assistance, offered at the University of Oregon, to help spouses find jobs. These are just a few of the things universities could do, she feels, to encourage more women to join the ranks of academe.

Nationally, the National Science Foundation has initiated programs to encourage women in science. One such program is a 5-year NSF Faculty Award for Women given to women in science and engineering disciplines. Professor Nagurney is the recipient of one such award, receiving a $250,000 stipend to support her research program. This financial support enables her to travel to conferences and workshops and increase the breadth of her experience.