Vertical integration of teaching and research has been a tradition of the Department of Mathematics at Chicago for decades. Unlike many top research departments, we have always viewed a role in precollegiate education as part of our mission. Our first five-year VIGRE grant has had major impact on our programs at all levels, and we aim to use the second five-year grant to consolidate these experimental new programs. We describe two of the most distinctive of these programs here.
Members of our Department have for many years run programs aimed at Chicago area high school students (the YSP, or Young Scholars Program) and at Chicago public school teachers (SESAME), most intensively during the summer. With VIGRE support, we initiated an REU summer program. Undergraduates, primarily mathematics majors, both learn new mathematics that is not part of the standard curriculum and teach in the YSP and SESAME programs. The dual nature of the REU has proven to be spectacularly and unexpectedly popular and successful.
The first VIGRE budget had 18 undergraduate participants in the REU. In 2005, there will be 62, chosen from 84 applicants, all University of Chicago students. Graduate students serve as mentors to the undergraduates, with 34 graduate participants in 2005. Postdocs and senior faculty, 7 each in 2005, teach in the REU, and others teach in YSP and SESAME. There are over 400 total participants from the various levels.
A second striking new program is the Directed Reading Program (DRP), in which 15 graduate students mentor 15 undergraduates one-on-one during each quarter of the academic year, exploring a topic of mutual interest weekly. This is on top of the regular undergraduate course load, showing a desire to learn. Remarkably, the graduate students both initiated the program and run it. They solicit and evaluate applications, set up the pairings, run evening sessions at which the undergraduates give talks, and monitor the program through evaluation forms that they prepare and that must be filled out by all participants. There is minimal faculty supervision. One undergraduate participant who has gone on to graduate study elsewhere is working to institute such a program at her new school.
These and other VIGRE-supported programs have doubled the proportion of undergraduate mathematics majors to about 7.5%, well above the percentage at comparable undergraduate schools. Many go on to graduate study in mathematics, and recent Chicago undergraduates can be found at most major graduate departments of mathematics. With the new VIGRE grant, we aim to make these and other successful innovations part of our permanent program. These programs can serve as a model, with our VIGRE-supported participants expected to play a large role in initiating analogous activities elsewhere.
