About

This blog is the personal web log of Ron Buckmire, Ph.D. For my professional website, go here: https://www.oxy.edu/academics/faculty/ron-buckmire

Here's a short biography (120 words, June 2023)

Ron Buckmire is Professor of Mathematics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, where has been on the faculty since receiving a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1994. He has served as a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation twice. His published articles are in an eclectic collection of peer-reviewed journals such as Data, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, and Albany Law Review. In 2023, he was named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the first person from a small liberal arts college, the fourth Black person, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to receive this prestigious honor.

Here's a slightly longer biography:

Ron Buckmire is Professor of Mathematics at Occidental College (Oxy) in Los Angeles, California. He holds degrees (Ph.D., M.Sc. and B.Sc.) in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He has been on the Oxy faculty since 1994, beginning as Minority Postdoctoral Scholar-in-Residence and eventually serving as chair of the mathematics department twice (2005-2010 and 2015-2016), achieving the rank of Full Professor in 2014 and was Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs and Director of the Core Program from 2018 to 2022. He was an employee of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2011-2013 and 2016-2018. At NSF, he was a Lead Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) where he headed the S-STEM program and was responsible for managing DUE’s award portfolio promoting excellence in undergraduate mathematics education throughout the United States. In 2023, he became the first person at a small liberal arts college, the fourth Black person and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to be named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). 

He is the co-editor of two monographs: Improving Applied Mathematics Education (Springer Nature, 2021) and Math & Racial Justice: the Role of Mathematics in Today’s Movement for Racial Justice (MSRI, 2022). He has published articles in an eclectic collection of peer-reviewed journals such as Data, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations, IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, Works and Days and the Albany Law Review. His research interests are in numerical analysis of differential equations, applied mathematics, the scholarship of teaching and learning and applications of data science/machine learning to social justice.  He regularly teaches courses in mathematics, such as ordinary differential equations, complex analysis, mathematical modeling, and the history of mathematics. He is a passionate advocate for broadening the participation of historically excluded groups (especially LGBTQ+ individuals and racial/ethnic minorities) in mathematics and other disciplines in science, technology, and engineering. He serves and has served the national mathematics community in several capacities, including as Vice-President for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at SIAM, Chair of the AMS Committee on EDI, Chair of MSRI’s Broadening Participation Advisory Committee, member of BIRS’ EDI board and ICERM’s board of trustees. He is a co-founder and board member of Spectra, the association for LGBTQ+ mathematicians and their allies. 

Here is a much longer biography:

According to Wikipedia, Ron Buckmire is an "American mathematician and LGBT activist." As an LGBT activist, he is probably most well-known for his volunteer activities, such as creating the Queer Resources Directory, the first comprehensive directory of LGBT and HIV/AIDS information on the Internet, in 1991, before the World Wide Web was invented. The QRD was one of several named plaintiffs in a successful Supreme Court challenge to the 1996 Communications Decency Act that was ruled unconstitutional in ACLU et al. v. Reno (521 U.S. 844, 1997). In 2006, he co-founded the Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition, the premiere Black LGBT political organization in Los Angeles. He currently serves as immediate past Board President for the Jordan/Rustin Coalition and was an ex officio member of Board of Directors the Center for Health Justice. He has previously served on the Board of Directors of Immigration Equality, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Equality California and the PlanetOut Corporation. During the 2008 campaign to defeat Proposition 8, the controversial (and ultimately unconstitutional) ballot measure to amend the California constitution to prevent same-sex couples from accessing civil marriage in California, he was co-chair of the Los Angeles County No On 8 Committee.

As a mathematician, Ron has been on the faculty of Occidental College, Barack Obama’s first alma mater, since 1994 and is currently a Full Professor of Mathematics. In 2023, he became the first person at a small liberal arts college, the fourth Black person and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to be named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). He became an Assistant Professor in 1996, was promoted with tenure to Associate Professor in 2004 and promoted again to full Professor in 2014. From 2018 to 2022 he served as Associate Dean of Curricular Affairs and Director of the Core Program (Occidental's version of general education). He served as chair of the mathematics department from 2005 to 2010 and again from January 2015 to July 2016. His academic interests involve applied mathematics, numerical analysis, mathematics education, LGBT history and sexual orientation law.

For two academic years (starting in August 2011), he was on leave from his tenured faculty position at Occidental College while serving as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) of the National Science Foundation, in Arlington, VA (Washington, D.C. metro area). There he worked on promoting excellence in undergraduate education through distribution and administration of federal grants to support projects in various programs such as S-STEM (Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), MSP (Math and Science Partnerships), STEP (STEM Talent Expansion Program) and TUES (Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM). Ron is an advocate for the incorporation of teaching with technology in the classroom and the practice of using active learning techniques to improve the teaching of mathematics. He is active in efforts to reform  the teaching and learning of algebra in local schools nearby Occidental College in northeast Los Angeles. He has been recognized for his work serving as a role model for other out LGBT professionals in STEM careers. In summer of 2016, Ron became a federal employee and returned to the National Science Foundation as a program officer in DUE with lead responsibility for the S-STEM program. In August 2018, acknowledging the strain of maintaining a bicoastal work-life balance, he resigned from NSF and returned to Occidental College as the inaugural Associate Dean of the College for Curricular Affairs and Director of the Core Program.

In addition to his professional career, Ron has long been a passionate advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). He has served on multiple committees of every major national mathematics association (AMS, MAA, SIAM, etc) devoted to broadening participation by historically underrepresented minorities in mathematics for years. In 2021, he became the first Vice-President for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the first chair of the American Mathematical Society (AMS)'s policy Committee on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (CoEDI). He also serves as the Chair of the Human Resources Advisory Committee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and is on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Computation and Experimental Mathematics (ICERM). He is one of the co-founders of Spectra, the association for LGBT mathematicians (and their allies).

Ron lives in the Montecito Hills section of Los Angeles (near Highland Park, Hermon, South Pasadena, El Sereno and Montecito Heights) with his legally married spouse Dean Elzinga. He now blogs irregularly at MadProfessah.com; You can follow his tweets at twitter.com/madprofessah or connect with him on LinkedIn or Instagram.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this blog do not reflect the views of Ron Buckmire's employer(s).