The goal of NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program is for site leaders to take undergraduate participants from a relatively dependent status, as a researcher, to as independent a status as their abilities warrant. The Project Director at this site, Anant Godbole, will use this as a guiding principle at every stage of the program, as he has during the past eighteen years as an REU site director. At East Tennessee State University, eight undergraduate students from a diverse set of backgrounds and schools will work alongside two elementary or high school teachers in the summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012, and conduct original research in probability theory, statistics, or discrete mathematics. Their work will be presented, as appropriate, at the premier annual mathematics conference in the nation, and half of the work is expected to be published in a peer reviewed mathematics or statistics journal. The research problems selected for the students will be contemporary; difficult but tractable; of interest to the wider mathematical community; and lead to more questions with every successfully proven new result. Consequently, students will get a taste of what research is really like, and be able to make an informed decision as to whether they ought to pursue research careers.
Our nation is facing the most serious crisis in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education since the 1950's. Ensuring diversity in STEM education, enhancing K-12 teacher training in content areas, and guaranteeing a steady increase in STEM professionals at all levels are three areas of critical national importance. With this in mind, we will strive to recruit more minority participants than in the past; maintain the gender ratio at 1:1 as before; select students from a diverse set of schools; have REU students develop a symbiotic relation with students participating in other NSF Programs on campus (particularly the NSF-STEP and NSF-Noyce Programs both of which were recipients of significant funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009); and have K-12 teachers involved in serious research that they may use to inspire students in their classrooms, mostly in high poverty districts. Anant Godbole may be contacted at 423-534-6209 or at godbolea@etsu.edu. The web address (URL) for information about the REU Site is www.etsu.edu/cas/math/activities/reu.aspx.
was intended to lead three teams of students and teachers in a series of serious and deep research explorations that would enable the students to make informed decisions about entering graduate schools in the Mathematical Sciences, and the teachers to see that mathematics is a discipline with many open-ended questions. Eight students were selected for participation in each of three years, and they were joined by (i) two unfunded international students, one in each of years 1 and 3; (ii) one unfunded US citizen in Year 2; and (iii) One student in Year 1 who was funded through an NSF-STEP grant. Two teachers participated in each of Years 1 and 3 respectively. The intellectual merits of the project were that, in the three years of the award, (i) Four papers have been published, two papers have been accepted, six papers have been submitted, and nine papers are in preparation for submission. Each of these papers have made a significant impact on the state of mathematical knowledge. (ii) Each student has presented her/his findings at professional meetings, in most cases at the Annual Joint Mathematics Meetings; (iii) Each student worked in collaboration with others, on at least one and in most cases two or more projects. They have thus worked in a team environment. (iv) Students have entered prestigious graduate programs in Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, and Biostatistics. (v) Two students have won NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, and two have won DOD Graduate Fellowships. Interestingly, one of these students was an unfunded US citizen. The broader impacts of the project were that (a) Teachers participated in the program alongside the students. In the first year, teachers were chosen from participants in the NSF-GK12 project titled Science First! Teachers in Year 3 have submitted a paper in a refereed journal, and presented their work at the Southeastern Combinatorics Conference. (b) There were connections between this project and NSF-GK12, NSF-Noyce, and NSF-STEP projects. This symbiosis enriched the experience of all. (c) 15 of the 28 students were from non-research-intensive schools. The single (rather low!) minority participant won an NSF Graduate Fellowship. 13 of the 28 students and 3 of the 4 teachers were female. (d) Each of the submitted papers was first posted on the online repository, www.arxiv.org, thus ensuring widespread dissemination.
