*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 1 Issue 5 August 4, 1993 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. PLEASE FORWARD TO ANY POTENTIALLY INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS Please, direct submissions and questions to kalin@math.psu.edu (editor for the month of August) To subscribe: Send mail to Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu Next issue: Wednesday, August 11 Back issues are available via anonymous ftp to speedway.net in /pub/ymn Editor for the month of July was Mark Winstead, (mww8f@virginia.edu). 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. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editorial 2 News and notes 3 MacLane vs. Garfunkel 4 Winter meeting and YMN _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editorial We made it into our second month. The list of subscribers went over 300 and it keeps on growing. This issue seems to be short in new developments. There is a possibility that YMN will have a panel at the winter meeting in Cincinnati but the details are still not clear at this time. The last issue of the Notices is out. It has quite interesting information for those of you that are on the market or plan to graduate soon. The NSF budget breakdown and the new statistics about the unemployment rate among new Ph.D's. _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 News and notes As of July 30, we have a dedicated FTP site on speedway.net . I have placed the last four issues of the YMN in /pub/ymn. There is an INDEX file and I ventured to put the first round of job announcements for next Fall, that the AMS sends out. Check the last issue of the AMS Notices for details on how to use the e-math services and Mark's note in ymn4. Because of space limitations I will be forced to use some compression in the future. If you have any questions and comments please send mail to kalin@math.psu.edu and I will try to fix the problem. _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 MacLane vs. Garfunkel From: aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu (Ed Aboufadel) I just got the new issue of the Notices. This publication is getting more and more interesting. And buried in this issue are some points that I think are important to all of us in YMN. But first, let's start with the Garfunkel vs. MacLane debate in Forum and on the letters page. After a close reading, I've boiled down their arguments to something more elegant: On p. 611: Garfunkel: The current hierarchical reward system in the profession is unwise and unfair. Teaching should be more highly valued. MacLane: I like the way the system is. (Now let's see if I can use some Latin words someplace.) On p.571: Garfunkel: Maybe you didn't hear me the first time. MacLane: I heard you. (Now let's see if I can do something clever with the letters SMSG.) Seriously, Garfunkel writes, "A Ph.D. in mathematics as presently earned does not represent an adequate undergraduate teaching certificate." And MacLane writes, "To our great advantage, there is now no such thing as the 'undergraduate teaching certificate'." For those of us who have been looking for a job, we know that a necessary condition to teach at a college or university full-time is the Ph.D., so if it isn't an "undergraduate teaching certificate," it is a union card. Now look on p. 604, Table 3B. (And speaking of hierarchy, check out that I-II-III-IV-V-M-B set up.) Last year there were 1193 open positions available in the U.S. Of those, 792 were at the M or B schools (schools which don't have a doctoral program). I think it is fair to say that these are positions where the primary responsibility is teaching. So, 2/3 of the positions open last year were teaching positions. When it comes to applying for jobs, keep that in mind. What is the real connection between research and teaching? It is that both good teachers and good researchers have similar attitudes: a desire to experiment and explore, an openness to new ideas and techniques. Good researchers can be good teachers if they take into the classroom the attitude they have when working at the frontiers of Mathematics. Some do. Some don't. Finally, to demonstrate that I can use Latin words, too, I heard this on the radio today: "Status quo" is Latin for "the mess were in." Ed Aboufadel Southern Connecticut State University _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 The Winter meeting and YMN Ed Aboufadel is currently working with Jim Maxwell of the AMS to come up with some plans of participation in the winter meeting by YMN. The holdup in an announcement is trying to assure that we don't overlap with AMS/MAA/SIAM joint Committee on Employment Issues and its plans. There is a strong possibility of some sort of reception. More on this at a later date (next week?). Mark Winstead mww8f@weyl.math.virginia.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal Next time: Your comments and submissions.