During eight weeks each summer of 2010-2012, 12 undergraduate students will have the opportunity to visit K-State and carry out research projects under the mentorship of the mathematics department's faculty. This REU targets a mixed population of students from community colleges in Western Kansas who might otherwise not have an opportunity to experience mathematics work and consider graduate studies, and students preparing for graduate studies in mathematics. Since half or more of the student population we plan to recruit will be early in their studies, and hence expected to have limited experience with mathematical proof, the REUs will feature a series of talks by Philosophy faculty on epistemology of mathematics and propositional logic.
The goals of the REU are to:
- Help students to be independent researchers;
- enhance their understanding of basic mathematics and the areas involved in their own project;
- develop a sense of "sound" mathematical reasoning;
- create a sense of community among the REU students and our own students and faculty.
The REU will also offer panels on graduate school and how to apply, and Graduate Record Exam (GRE) prepping workshops that we currently offer to our own math majors. Added features of this REU are a weekly meeting of participants to discuss their progress, eventually leading to a closing conference in which the students present their results, and the availability of a "floating trobleshooter."
All our mathematician mentors have experience directing undergraduate research; often, and according to the student's investment, leading to publications, awards, and admission in Group I graduate programs. Social activities will be shared with the concurrent Physics and Biology REUs and the university-wide Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (SUROP). The PIs will use the human resources of the NIH grant "Kansas Bridges to the future" to recruit participants in Western Kansas, and a collaboration with the Multicultural Engineering Program to assist in recruiting Native American students.
The primary goal of SUMaR is to provide students from a variety of other undergraduate institutions, including community colleges, minority-serving institutions and regional schools (both public and private) without graduate programs in mathematics, with a research experience that is similar to the one which our own graduate-track mathematics students have during the last two years at KSU. This entails helping students to be independent researchers; enhancing their understanding of basic mathematics and the areas involved in their own project; developing a sense of sound mathematical reasoning; creating a sense of community among the REU students andour own students and faculty. The ultimate goal fo all REU programs is to increase the number of US students pursuing graduate degrees in STEM. Among the 37 past SUMaR participants, 18 were women, 8 were Latina/o, 3 were African-Americans, 5 were first generation college students, one has a slight disability, at least 4 began their studies at community colleges, and 3 were non-traditional students. SUMaR 2010-2013 has thus far produced 3 published papers, 3 accpeted for publication, and 1 submitted and available on ArXiV Math (all of them in peer revewed journals), as well as 2 invitations for contributed talks to mentors based on the work carried out with their REU teams. Work done while participating in SUMaR led to 11 talks given by student participants, 3 of them at a prominent competitive nationwide young matehmaticians conference. The PI was invited to participate in a Project NeXT panels on undergraduate research at the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2012. PI and Co-PI organized a special session in a regional mathematics meeting in open to undergraduates who had done their work at their home institution (2012). Of SUMaR's 37 alumni, 13 are in or graduated from graduate programs in mathematics, 2 are in graduate programs in statistics, 1 in a graduate program in computer science, 1 in a chemistry graduate program, 2 in graduate programs in mathematics education, 1 harking from a community college obtained a degree in nuclear and mechanical engineering in a 4 year college, 2 are working in the finance industry and 1 as an actuary, 11 are still in undergraduate school.
