*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 1 Issue 1 July 7, 1993 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. Subscriptions to date: 101 PLEASE FORWARD TO ANY POTENTIALLY INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Letter from the editor for July 2 Visions, notes from some of the other organizers: Ed Aboufadel, Curtis Bennett 3 What schools are doing to reduce PhDs produced 4 Resignation of the ``point guard'' 5 A question for discussion about future job postings 6 Job posting To submit an item for publication this month mww8f@virginia.edu Miscellaneous questions should be directed to the same address for now. The temporary address for subscription orders is mww8f@virginia.edu Editor for the month of July is Mark Winstead, (mww8f@virginia.edu). The editor for next month will be announced soon. Next issue: July 12, 1993. Submissions Deadline: July 11, 1993 5pm edt. Publication will be weekly for now, and increase when appropriate. A good guess would be biweekly by mid-September and three or more times a week by mid-October or so. This projection from a member of a group who expected 200 subscriptions by the end of July and we are already half way there. ___________________________________________________________________________ Item # 1: From the editor for July Who would of thought just one month ago what one post in the "Young Scientists' Network Digest" would lead to? It has been just less than one month since I posted a note suggesting that the YSN think of starting a system of subnetworks to help get a grip on the volume of traffic in its newsletter. Speciality networks like a YSN-Math would have also been more effective in lobbying and educating mathematicians, since, as someone told me, ``mathematicians are more likely to listen to other mathematicians than a group of [general] scientists.'' My suggestion was tossed to the side by YSN, but a number of you contacted me, suggesting we proceed with an independent effort and even volunteering your time and energy. Thanks to efforts by Ed Aboufadel, Curtis Bennett, Kalin Godev and Neil Calkin, this is what is happening. Contained within this issue are many visions of what we can do and what we can become, and you will see much discussion in this and the next few issues on what form we shall take. We (the four mentioned above and myself) have decided to proceed in an incomplete form with the thought that talk is cheap. We could have discussed the format, etc. until the next century, but there was a sense that this was needed NOW! Let us all be patient as the bugs are ironed out. Some immediate issues to be decided are a permanent name for our little confederacy of individuals (the word "confederacy" was suggested by Ed, since it reflects the fact that no one will be authorized to represent any one but themselves, but we do have common interests) and a permanent name for this journal. I would personally like to see the informal board of organizers evolve into a larger board of editors/adminstrators, and I would also wish someone would stop me from volunteering so !@#$%&* much to do things (see my other letter in this issue). The goals and purposes for attempting this have been more elegantly expressed by others within these pages. Let us remember, however, that this is to be YOUR journal. I have one request though. Since I joined the YSN, I have seen what I consider to be too much hostility in that organization. I would like the Young Mathematicians' Network to be a supportive, friendly environment. We may disagree, but let us assume that everyone has the best of intentions with their remarks, comments and actions. If you think someone is wrong, consider it your job to educate them without being condescending and certainly don't blast them. Submissions are welcome from anyone, but while I am editor this month, all submissions that I feel are hostile, mean, insulting, racist, sexist etc. will be returned to be rewritten. ALL OTHERS will be published. I encourage future editors to follow a similiar policy. Enjoy, and please send in your submissions, Mark Winstead, mww8f@virginia.edu Editor for the month of July P.S. Apologies to those who included personal messages and requests in their subscription requests and didn't get a response. The volume was enormous. In particular, someone wrote requesting my impression of the job market and I don't know who. Quickly: it is bad. Example: a post-doc finishing up at U. of Michigan told me that out of 13(?) post-docs there finishing, only two had received tenure track offers as of two weeks ago. Also, it seems that no one is getting tenure track jobs if they received their degree this year. ________________________________________________________________________ Item #2: Visions Hello to all you young mathematicians out there. I hope that this mailing list will be a source of support for all while we establish careers in a poor job market. As I write this, it is June 24, and today on the cover of the New York Times is a story about a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. One of the mathematicians mentioned in the story says that it may be the most exciting thing to every happen in mathematics. So why am I not very excited? Perhaps it is the sentence in the article that says that maybe four or five people in the world will understand the proof. (If the proof doesn't have a flaw in it, that is.) Is this the way Mathematics has to be? Or maybe this is the type of thing that makes me think about the research component of my career and where it is and isn't. I spend a lot of time teaching. During the academic year, I teach four courses a semester, and between that and office hours and commitee meetings and paperwork, that doesn't leave me a lot of time to think deeply about mathematics. And that troubles me. I hope that through this newsletter, we can discuss issues like these. Also, I'll be at the SIAM meeting in Philadelphia. I hope to run into some of you there. Edward Aboufadel Southern Connecticut State University _____________________________________________________________________ I guess I will start with my views on what the YMN should be. Most of you have seen the list of five general goals put out in our information sheet, and I think that is a good start. For me the question is how to interpret these five goals. (a) A mathematicians group keeping the mathematical community honest about the MYTH. This is fairly straightforward. Most of us were told when we entered graduate school that there would be no shortage of jobs when we graduated. This has understandably caused us a large amount of distress when we received our degrees and discovered that jobs were very difficult to find. Unfortunately, I still know of many cases of professors telling their students that the market will be much better in a few years. Their reasoning is the same as it was five years ago. Professors who retire will have to be replaced. The faulty assumption of 1-1 replacement has been shown false. (b) A group providing information about job searches from both the inside and the outside. We can further the work of Ed's *FOCUS* articles. First try and get the departments we are associated to look a little more seriously at how they write advertizements so as to limit a lot of useless work for applicants. Second, alert those starting on the job searches about some of the Do's and Don'ts and other advice. If you are aware of how the system works, you can save yourself a lot of aggravation. (c) A support group for those on the job market. This may duplicate what the YSN initially did in terms of a support group, but since I have been a member of the YSN, there have been precious few articles performing the services of a support group. Much more YSN has provided an airing ground for flame wars about foreigners, job advertizements, and national testing for Ph.D.s. d) A group providing information on publishing, grant proposals, obtaining industry jobs, and other things which many of us did not get in graduate school. This speaks for itself. As an example, my first year out I needed money to go to a conference at Oberwolfach (in Germany). The only place I knew to apply for such money was the NSF, but NSF grants are for more than travel, and surprise surprise, I didn't qualify for summer money. This year (2 years too late) I was told, "Oh, you should have applied to the NSA, they will frequently deny summer funding but provide conference support." Additionally, we can provide copies of successful NSF postdoc proposals, NSF grant proposals, NSA grant proposals, etc. Many departments do this for faculty also. e) A group to inform the mathematical community of the interests and concerns of the younger mathematicians. The several members of the AMS board that I know are very interested in the concerns of younger mathematicians, but they don't know where to find out about them, or sometimes don't think to find out about them. As a large group, we should be able to get the council's ear from time to time. Possibly we could put some younger members on the board. As the voting process now stands, it is difficult to get elected if you haven't published much. But this basically makes it difficult to get elected if you are a recent graduate. I think that we probably shouldn't endorse candidates as that requires a more solid organization than I want, but if members announce their candidacy in the newsletter, it will make it easier to obtain the nominating signatures and the votes to get elected. After these issues is the issue of how such a list will be run. I feel very strongly that I wish to avoid prolonged flame wars. A certain amount of flaming is unavoidable, but the purpose of this group is to work together to help solve problems we all face. I propose that the editors by unanimous agreement can call a 2 week moratorium on a flame war that gets out of hand. I personally will be very loath to call such a moratorium, but at times on the Young Scientist's Network it has struck me that such a policy would be good. I also hope that we can avoid becoming an adversary to the AMS. We may at times disagree with it, but it will be easier to change the system if we can convert the AMS rather than conquer it. At this time we are loosely based. I think this is good. It allows for disagreements within a common stream of purpose. There may be many who disagree with some of these goals. Please let us know what you see as the future of the organization. Also how to proceed on the newsletter. Curtis Bennett (Editor's note: I think most of the abbreviations used within are self-explanatory, but let us be careful in the future about using them. The one exception I see in Curtis' letter is that some of you may not know that NSA refers to the National Security Agency.) _______________________________________________________----- Item # 3: A letter I received There has been some discussion of the Young Mathematicians' Network on the usernet sci.math, including a note from Len Evans, a senior mathematician at Northwestern University. Prof Evans wrote sci.math suggesting the real solution to the job market is to reduce the number of PhDs produced each year. I asked him what Northwestern is doing to reduce the PhDs produced. His response: Northwestern is of course doing nothing to reduce the number of Ph. D.'s produced each year. In fact, we have never produced large numbers of Ph. D.s and we may produce fewer because our standards seem to be going up slightly. However, no particular institution has any incentive to reduce the number of graduate students. Large state universities need the TAs to do the teaching, so they have counter-incentives. In our case, loss of TAs would cause some minor disruption but more important we wouldn't get to teach very many graduate courses. Fortunately, mathematics is not like other areas where the graduate students are needed to do the actual research. In any case, I don't see any possibility of action on the part of mathematics departments in this direction. When the word gets out how bad the current situation is, possibly only those most dedicated to mathematics will remain in the field. Maybe the others will go to medical school. __________________________________________________ Item # 4: Resignation of the ``point guard'', Mark Winstead To the members of the YMN: When I started in the efforts to establish something like this, it was with an attitude of ``someone should ..., and if not me, then who?''. I had an excuse not to do all of this, but I decided not to use it. It is now time to formally announce my resignation as whatever it is that I am to this confederacy of ours, effective August 1st, 1993. I have been proud to serve as ``point guard'' for this young organization (the basketball illiterate are welcome to write for explanation of the term). I am still willing to serve on any editoral or adminstrative board in the future, after some time away from it. Many of you knew that I would have to do this. I have a position for only the fall at Mittag-Leffler, which is in Sweden. ML is having an emphasis year in algebraic topology (fall) and algebraic k-theory (spring), and with the talent that will be there in the fall, I have to take the fullest advantage of the situation that I can. This requires that I minimize distractions, and I already have the distractions of being in Europe and having to find a job for both the spring and next year (94-95). I will of course make submissions to the journal and fully participate as a regular member during this time. All of this means that someone is needed immediately for each of the following tasks: 1) Coordinate Publicity - rewrite and distribute the little file I prepared which describes our purpose and form. Occasionally post notes in YSN and usernet detailing our status and inviting subscriptions. Handling the inquiries for information that follow these postings. Note: Curtis Bennett has already volunteered to be the liason with the *Notices*. I think Ed Aboufadel has agreed to do the same with *FOCUS*. Each can correct me if I am wrong. 2) Handle the subscriptions and mailing lists - unless you can come up with a better system than I have, this could grow to be a big job quickly. Someone who can automate this should volunteer to help. 3) Be the person who or on the committee that knows who's doing what - enough said on this one. There are other tasks to be done, but either nobody is doing them yet or I have forgotten who volunteered. A special thanks to Ed Aboufadel, Curtis Bennett, Neil Calkin and Kalin Godev for their input and work towards this effort. I greatly regret if it seems that I am the only one who has put any significant amount of work into this project. For each of these men, I can easily point to some major facet of what has been done so far as their work or suggestion. (And yes, I would like to see some women join in the development and adminstration of this soon.) It has been a pleasure to serve, Mark Winstead mww8f@virginia.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item #5 A question of policy The following is not meant to discredit or call in question the following posting. It is meant solely to prompt discussion about establishing guidelines for the future acceptance of job postings. For now, all job postings which are not clearly posted elsewhere will be accepted. Question for all of us: Should we include all job announcements submitted, or shall a case by case judgement be made? Some explanation: 1) There are a number of places for job postings, the best of which (my opinion) is e-math. A job seeker simply has to post a resume on the system, and whenever a new posting is made, it is automatically sent to the job seeker by e-mail. Telnet e-math.ams.org, login and password are "e-math", then look under ``Professional Opportunities''. This is a free service for job seekers. (Do we have a volunteer to compile a complete list of places to look for job advertisements?) 2) Often, various labs and schools are required by law to advertise any available position, even though many already know who they are going to hire. In such circumstances, these employers often choose to go the cheapest route possible, or the route which will lead to fewer applications to process. It would be a shame if this journal was used for such deception. It is difficult, though, to recognize this situation. ( I do not suspect that the listing below is in this category). Some clues to such advertisements are i) A ridiculously specific job description ii) the ad appears days before the deadline, or in the case of academic positions, the ad has an early deadline, e.g. a position deadline before mid-December for a job starting the next fall. iii) the ad appears only in some obscure place. Does anybody know of any other clues? ----- Mark _________________________________________________________________ Item # 6: Job posting Postdoctoral Associate in Medical Image Analysis Yale University New Haven, CT There will be one or two openings for postdoctoral associates in the department of diagnostic radiology at Yale University. Joint appointments may be possible in engineering and applied science following start of appointment. The group is comprised of 3 faculty and several graduate students. The specific projects of interest are in the area of measurement of non-rigid motion and deformation from a sequence of diagnostic images such as MR images of the beating heart. The ideal candidate should have a PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or computational mathematics, and have interests in applications. Please submit a copy of your CV and names and addresses of 3 references to Amir Amini Division of Imaging Science Department of Diagnostic Radiology 333 Cedar St., 325 BML Yale University New Haven, CT 06510 for more information, send e-mail to amini@noodle.med.yale.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal Next week: Your comments, submissions and selected reviews.