{"id":4081,"date":"2015-07-01T11:43:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T18:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about-hmc\/?p=4081"},"modified":"2024-03-28T10:25:52","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T17:25:52","slug":"painting-lesson-leads-to-essay-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/2015\/07\/01\/painting-lesson-leads-to-essay-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Painting Lesson Leads to Essay Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>To increase awareness of women&#8217;s ongoing contributions to the mathematical sciences, the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Math for America recently co-sponsored an essay contest.&nbsp;Harvey Mudd College student Ramita Kondepudi \u201918 earned first place at the Undergraduate Level for her essay about Dr. Maria Klawe, <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/1Rq19xsszO1UB4yUIYA7ZYWJ8WdJlYygkN02m_lVH3_c\/edit?pli=1\">\u201cPainting With the President.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen I found the AWM contest, I decided on President Klawe immediately,\u201d says Kondepudi. \u201cI thought it would be a fun opportunity to get to know her better, as a woman in STEM that I look up to, and write about her accomplishments and life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Essay submissions were based on an interview with a woman mathematician or statistician in an academic, industrial or government career and were judged by a panel of mathematicians. Winners received a prize and had their essays published online at the AWM website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her essay, Kondepudi discusses Klawe\u2019s impressive biography as well as some of the many positive interactions she has had with Klawe while at Mudd, including being invited over to her house to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/admission\/2014\/11\/03\/painting-with-the-president\/\">learn water color painting<\/a>, a passion for which Klawe is well known. Kondepudi credits Klawe as a role model who helped her understand that \u201cyou don\u2019t have to look like the standard model to be successful\u201d\u2014and that women can succeed at the highest levels of science and mathematics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kondepudi\u2019s passion for writing goes back as far as kindergarten, where she wrote and \u201cpublished\u201d her first story for the school book fair. In high school, she blogged regularly about sustainability-related activities at <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkgreenspeak.blogspot.com\/\">ThinkGreenSpeak<\/a>. She is an Office of Admission tour guide and regular blogger on the College\u2019s Admission website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kondepudi will pursue an engineering degree, a decision she made after taking Introduction to Engineering Design and Manufacturing (E4) last spring. She says she enjoys the systematic approach that math and science offer to problem solving and wants to use these skills to address sustainable living and environmental advocacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To increase awareness of women&#8217;s ongoing contributions to the mathematical sciences, the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Math [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,22,25,30],"class_list":["post-4081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-award","category-engineering","category-mathematics","category-president","category-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13064,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4081\/revisions\/13064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}