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John Meakin and Jim Lewis at 2003 CID Convening
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Who are we? Our
CID leadership team has evolved during the past year. People who have
been most involved at some point during the past two years are the
following: Faculty: Steve Cohn, Jim Lewis, John Meakin, David Pitts, Mohammad Rammaha, Judy Walker, Roger Wiegand. For
the academic year 2004-05, Jim Lewis, John Meakin, David Pitts, and
Roger Wiegand are the faculty on the CID leadership team. Roger Wiegand
and Jim Lewis prepared the original proposal to Carnegie. Roger was
graduate committee chair and Jim was department chair in 2003. John
Meakin is currently department chair and David Pitts is currently
graduate committee chair of the department. Graduate Students: David
Milan and Amanda Potts are the current graduate students on the CID
team. Ben Duncan, Jennifer Everson, Pari Ford, Matt Koetz. Matt was
most involved in the first year of work on the CID, Pari has recently
taken a leadership role among graduate students in this work. Pari, Ben
and Jennifer are members of our graduate student advisory board. Pari
organizes our graduate student seminar. Alumni:
Cheryl Olsen (1997) is currently on a sabbatical at UNL and is the alumni representative on the CID Team.
UNL Math Department Home Page
UNL Math Department CID Page
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More About Our Department A brief profile of the Department of Mathematics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 33 tenure-track faculty, one non-tenure-track research professor Approximately 10 postdocs and research visitors each year Approximately 170 undergraduate math majors 67 graduate students (fall 2004): 34 male, 33 female; 57 US students, 10 foreign students 64 PhD's, 1994-2003 Average of 34 undergraduate B.S. degrees per year Approximately 28,000 student credit hours per year Research Strengths Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Biology Commutative Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, and K-theory Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems Discrete Mathematics and Coding TheoryFunctional Integration Groups, Semigroups, and Topology Mathematics Education Operator Theory and Operator Algebras Selected Department-Wide Awards and Honors NU
system-wide teaching award, 1998: 19 of the current faculty have won
college or university-wide distinguished teaching awards. US Presidential Award for excellence in science, mathematics and engineering mentoring, 1998. Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate partner institution in mathematics since 2003 NSF funded REU site grant since 2002 GAANN grant since 2003 Mentoring through Critical Transition Points grant funded, 2004- 2009. Mentoring through Outreach Annual Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics All Girls/All Math summer camps for high school girls Annual Math Day (approximately 1,400 Nebraska high school students) Annual Regional Workshop in the Mathematical Sciences Power Math (summer camp for junior high school students) Extensive program of summer workshops for Nebraska high school teachers Headquarters of the American Mathematics Competition Summer training site for U.S International Mathematics Olympiad team. Students Excel Five NSF graduate fellowships to senior math majors since 1999 Two NSF postdoctoral fellowships and many other postdoctoral fellowships to graduate students in past seven years 18 Goldwater Scholarships to undergraduate majors since 1989. Homeland security award to undergraduate math major in 2003. Alice T. Schaefer Award to undergraduate math major in 2000. Nationally competitive Putnam team (first among public institutions in the U.S. in 1995 and 2000.) Over $200,000 in departmental undergraduate scholarships each year Approximately 20 math majors each year involved in serious undergraduate research projects
Exemplary Element: Mentoring
Our department has had great success in educating women in the doctoral program. Follow this link for more detail.
Commonalities PowerPoint
Key Ideas PowerPoint
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What do we want to accomplish in the CID? Some issues that we originally identified for the focus of our work in the CID are listed below: How
should we position our PhD program? Is our traditional model of strong
research clusters in a limited number of disciplines still appropriate?
To what extent should our areas of strength influence strategies for
hiring and graduate recruiting?Is
a curriculum emphasizing broad knowledge of mainstream mathematics
still appropriate, or would our PhD students be better served by more
intense specialization?What
revisions of the graduate curriculum and degree requirements are
necesary and appropriate in order to accommodate interdisciplinary
research?How
do we best prepare PhD students for the jobs they will obtain? This
includes those who obtain nonacademic work and those who will teach at
clleges where research is not emphasized.Are
we graduating stewards of the discipline? Are our PhD graduates
prepared for the challenges of the 21st century? What can we do to
increase the number of tenure-track placements at Research I
universities?How can we best prepare PhD students who will become leaders in their profession?How can we increase the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities?
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What are we doing? Since the 2003 summer convening, we have engaged in the following activities in the context of our work on the CID. The
leadership of the department has engaged in an analysis of the graduate
experience at UNL, and has proposed a number of programs designed to
enhance this experience. Five phases of the graduate experience were
identified: Phase I: the first year, transition to graduate school Phase II: transition to advanced coursework and initial work on a thesis topic Phase III: additional advanced coursework and initial work on a thesis topic Phase IV: intensive work on the PhD thesis, preparing for the transition to the profession Phase V: early years as PhD graduate in the profession We
prepared and submitted to NSF proposals for a VIGRE grant (denied) and
a MCTP grant (recommended for funding, funding still pendingWe initiated a summer research reading program for first year graduate studentsWe ran a mathematical landscapes seminar in fall 2004. A pilot version of this was run in fall 2003.We held focus group discussions with senior graduate students in spring 2004.The department moved to a new building (Avery Hall) where faculty and graduate students are now together in one location.
Summary of Innovations
We are in the processing of implementing many important innovations to
our graduate program in the context of the MCTP proposal. The summer
IMMERSE program and the KRA program will be implemented in summer 2004,
and other aspects of the MCTP program will be phased in during the
2004-05 year. Here is a link to more detailed information about this
program.
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