Recruitment and Mentoring in Mathematics Program

Cuny City College, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This grant will run a Recruitment and Mentoring in Mathematics Program (RAMMP) program, with the purpose of increasing the number of students from underrepresented groups entering doctoral programs in mathematical sciences. For three years, ten advanced undergraduate students will divide into teams and engage in mentored summer research projects in mathematics. The students will develop their interests in mathematics in an active, supportive community of peers. The program will be run at the City University of New York, an institution known for its student diversity, and will expose talented students to mathematical research and related activities, which form the daily work of a doctoral student but which many undergraduates never experience. This experience together with mentorship and community building activities continuing throughout the year will encourage the student participants to pursue higher degrees and careers in the mathematical sciences. Research problems will be selected from the fields of faculty members participating in the program including Number Theory, Combinatorics, Algebra, Dynamical Systems, and Geometry. The problems will have a significant computational component and will be chosen so that even partial student progress will advance the long-term research agendas of their faculty mentors. Mentors will choose accessible, open questions whose resolution would lead to the discovery of new phenomena or new proof techniques with broad applicability. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.