*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 1 Issue 9 September 1, 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 Edward Aboufadel aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu , editor for the month of September. Next issue: Wednesday, September 8 Editor for October: Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu Editor for November: Steve Kennedy kennedy@math.stolaf.edu To subscribe: Send mail to Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu 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). Editor for the month of August was Kalin Godev (kalin@math.psu.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: FOCUS, Cincinnati 3 Email Problems 4 Comments from Stephen Kennedy about the Mathematics Profession 5 Mark Winstead -- Time to make some moves 6 A call for copies of successful NSF Postdoc applications 7 NSF Postdoctoral Fellowships 8 The Chalk Talk Room _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 EDitorial The Internet is a wonderful tool, leading to new and novel alliances. One of these alliances is the Young Mathematicians' Network, which I believe can serve to allievate the isolation many of us feel. We are isolated in that our current situations sometimes lack the information and moral support that we need. Here are some examples: the graduate student finishing up school and searching for his first job; the newly-minted Ph.D. starting her first position, wondering how to juggle research, teaching, and service requirements; the not-so-newly-minted Ph.D., recognizing that he isn't on track to a named chair at Princeton, wondering how to invest his time to create a worthwhile career; the researcher, working on her first grant proposal, and not really sure what to write; the teacher, watching 30% of his class fail on the first examination, wondering if that's normal. It's not as if we work in small or unfriendly departments, but sometimes we need to talk with others, particularly those in similar circumstances. I hope that through YMN, connections will be made. I'd like to hear many voices in this Digest, from the anxious to the concerned to the curious to the subversive. These voices will beget other voices. This wasn't possible six years ago, when only a few people knew what e-mail was. Edward Aboufadel Southern Connecticut State University _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 News and notes: FOCUS, Cincinnati Keith Devlin, the editor of FOCUS, is interesting in hearing some of the "Voices of a New Generation." He welcomes submissions to FOCUS from all of us, and notes, "if it is interesting and well written, I'd like to publish it." If you are motivated, send Keith a note at devlin@msri.org. YMN is co-sponsoring a Panel Discussion at the Joint Meetings in Cincinnati. The panel will discuss the job market, along with any other concerns on the minds of young mathematicians. Within the next week, we need to decide which one of our members will sit on the panel as "A member of the Young Mathematicians' Network." Anyone who is interested should send email to aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu. Also, a reception for YMN will follow the panel discussion, featuring hors d'oeuvres and possibly a cash bar. _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 Email Problems A couple of subscribers have noticed a relationship between receiving an issue of YMN and having problems with emacs and RMAIL. We are trying to figure out what is happening. Is anyone having similar problems? Send email to cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu or aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu and let us know. _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 Comments from Stephen Kennedy about the Mathematics Profession Kevin Madigan has a point (CoYM6)--YMN should be doing _something_. Unfortunately we have no power to change anything directly, all we can do is ask AMS-MAA-SIAM to act. And as long as there are only ~300 of us (at a guess this is about 2% of AMS membership) there is little chance of SIAM-AMS-MAA (hereinafter SAM) doing anything drastic at our request. We need to prove to them the dimensions of the problem by getting a couple of thousand people on our side. So, tell two of your friends about YMN and ask them to tell two of their friends, who should in turn tell two friends... I don't need to explain about exponential growth to you folks. We need to decide, by debating things in this forum, exactly what it is we think SAM can do to ameliorate the problem. I think we should then draft a petition requesting that SAM take certain actions and then beat the bushes in a signature campaign (this means setting up and (wo)manning a table in Cincinnati, trying to get our petition in the pages of FOCUS and NOTICES, posting it on every electronic bulletin board a mathematician is likely to read). While this is going on we investigate the by-laws of each of the professional societies to learn what provisions there are, if any, for bringing referenda to the membership. I think there is a lot of sympathy out there for our plight, maybe the membership is more sympathetic than the leadership. What can we ask for? I can think of four things I'd like to see SAM do right away. I'm sure there are dozens of other ideas out there--send them in for debate! 1. Divert some NSF/DMS funds that currently go to established researchers to create some emergency post-docs for young Ph.D.s. We would need to look into the amount of money DMS awards, and how they parcel it out. Decide how much of it we could reasonably ask for--and come up with a scheme to get those funds that won't cause current grantees to totally freak out. Ideas: a) Impose a ceiling on "summer salary". I believe that a grantee now gets 2/9 of their regular salary. Someone making 60K gets in excess of 13K. How much money could we generate if summer salary was capped at, say $7500? b) Institute flat-rate funding. Every grantee gets $x, and the wealth gets spread around a little wider. There was some discussion of this in NOTICES recently, I think the idea has been dropped. c) Institute a "tax" of 10% right off the top of every NSF award which goes into a pool to support fresh Ph.D.s. 2. Ask SAM to pass a resolution condemning the practice of hiring new/recent Ph.Ds into one-year positions. A new Ph.D. hired into such a position has all too frequently spent 6 or 8 anxious, spiritually draining months looking for a job. S/He moves to a new town in September, is supposed to teach his/her own classes for perhaps the first time, participate in the life of an unfamiliar dept. at an unfamiliar level, get the thesis in publishable form, get started on a new research program... and then in November drop it all and start looking a new job, which 6 or 8 bone-crushingly dispiriting months later all too often materializes as another one-year job. It is extremely short-sighted of departments to hire into such positions -- they get a distracted, unhappy faculty member who has no choice but to neglect her/his work to concentrate on finding the next job. The faculty member learns little or nothing about being a teacher or mathematician. In such a position there is no time for personal or professional growth and development -- only despair and anguish. The chaos in the job market is exacerbated by hundreds of people applying year after year for a new job. The profession reaps a harvest of cynical, embittered young mathematicians -- the very people who are its future. What good would a SAM resolution do? First, it would tell us that they're worried about us -- this would be good for morale. Second, it would alert department heads to the human damage they are perhaps unwittingly wreaking. They might just fight a little harder for a second year of funding for the next temporary position, or tweak the sabbatical schedule to create a need for two consecutive years. Moreover, SAM could easily put some teeth in such a resolution. SAM controls almost all advertising for academic mathematics hiring. Forbid advertisements for one-year positions in all their publications. (I don't think we could ever get that, so alternatively: not permit such ads until after April 1, thus putting such advertisers at a recruiting disadvantage, and financially penalize this anti-social behavior by charging a premium for such ads and tossing the money into the post-doc fund of item 1 above. Also, SAM could monitor one-year hiring and publicly censure institutions which make a habit of it.) 3) SAM does have a Joint Comittee on Employment and Opportunities. I would venture a guess that all of them have permanent jobs -- and have had such jobs for a good long time. If this is so (can anybody out there tell us who's on this committee? and their employment status?), we should ask that a quota be established and that x% of this committee be persons who are now or have in the recent past been looking for employment. I'm sure that there was a conscious effort made to place women on the Committee on the Status of Women, and minorities on the Committee on Minority Representation in Math--shouldn't jobseekers be represented on the committee handling employment issues? 4. I have heard rumors in each of the last two years of schools hiring new faculty at sub-standard salaries to teach higher loads than current faculty. Allyn Jackson hinted that such things are happening in part 1 of her Notices article on the job market. If, in fact, this is happening, it is base exploitation. Does anyone out there have first-hand evidence? If so, we should bring it to SAM and ask that SAM publicly censure any institution engaged in such practices and consider revoking their institutional membership and refusing any future employment advertisements from them in future SAM publications. What you can do today. 1. Tell all your friends about YMN--there is strength in numbers. 2. Participate -- respond to this message; think of something else SAM can do for us and post it here; volunteer to be editor of CoYM. I apologize for going on at such length--it was very depressing to see that there was not a single submission to CoYM8, nothing is going to change unless we do something! Steve Kennedy Math Dept. St. Olaf College Northfield, MN 55057 kennedy@math.stolaf.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #5 Mark Winstead -- Time to make some moves [From the author: Since many of you are new to this, so I felt it appropriate to mention that I was the first editor of CYM and a cofounder of YMN] On my long flight from Dulles airport to Stockholm, I spent some time thinking about various things, including YMN. I wanted to share some thoughts with you. I believe that September represents a focal point in the development of what the Young Mathematicians' Network will be doing. We (by "we", I generally mean all of us in YMN) have been publishing the *Concerns of Young Mathematicians* since early July. In September, I would expect that membership will shoot up, with everyone returning for the fall and with the *Notices* article to appear with the mention and subscription information in it. The changes that fall bring should bring the more non-active members to a more active role, increasing the activity level and lengths of CYM that much more. At such a crucial juncture, it is more important than ever that we keep the environment of YMN friendly, as I called for in the first issue of CYM. While activism is a part of what we are doing, in my mind I think of YMN as a support group and information exchange. For that, we need a non-hostile environment if not friendliness. With this issue, and the next several, you will see some changes or announced changes to come. There is planned a column or two; I especially like the planned "Advice sought- advice given" (or whatever it is to be called) column. You should also see some articles written by some individuals who are on the hiring side of the job market. Two friends of mine have told me that they intend to write articles for CYM, one friend plans to write on the hiring process from the view of small to midsize colleges, something he has been involved with, while the other has said he will write something on the importance of documenting your teaching excellence and how to do it. These should appear before any of us is too far along with preparing ourselves and certainly before the actual applying starts. But activism should not be neglected. I intend to write an article detailing a simple idea for changing the preparation for the Employment Registry at the winter meetings which I think could be used as a first step for several possible major changes. (Hint to simple change: Why does the resume issue of EIMS go out only a month before the ER, a month which for most schools includes the end of a term and a multiweek holiday break? When would a hiring committee actually review the thing?) Closing thought: YMN works only if we work. Mark Winstead winstead@ml.kva.se P.S. Many of you will be happy to know that I have found a job for the spring, after my tour here at Mittag-Leffler ends. I have a visiting lecturer position at Cal-San Diego for the winter and spring quarters. _______________________________________________________________ Item #6 A call for copies of successful NSF Postdoc applications I am starting to try and build a file that consists of successful NSF postdoc research descriptions. So far I have one. Would any members who have received NSF postdocs, still have the computer files for their applications, and don't mind them being used for this purpose send them along to me. In a few weeks I will try and start a file of successful grant proposals. Also, in a week or two I will try and have a file that I can send to people who desire copies of some successful NSF postdoc proposals. Curtis Bennett _______________________________________________________________ Item #7 NSF Postdoctoral Fellowships As the school year gets started, I would like to say a few words about applications for National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Mathematics (NSF Postdoc). If you are interested in a research position, it is worth eventually applying for an NSF Postdoc. My personal experience is that I applied two times. The first time I was expecting to receive my Ph.D. at the end of the academic year and was turned down. The second time I had been out for a year and a half and won a fellowship. I think in general, you should never expect to get research funding on the first try. The first try does provide you with knowledge making subsequent applications more likely to succeed. I have requested information either be posted to the YMN or submitted to me that explains how the selection process is completed by the NSF. I hope this will be available in a few weeks. In the meantime, I will try and summarize the factors that I believed helped my application the second time around. 1) Focus: In my first application I didn't have a clear problem to focus on. I basically said, "I want to continue my thesis research." I then included some discussion of what my thesis research was. In the second application, I gave a detailed background of my current research and discussed a specific problem that I was trying to solve. I then included all of the partial results I had at that date. Finally, I tried to explain why the problem was worth solving. I will admit that I gave in to hyperbole upon occassion, but I tried to avoid making preposterous statements. 2) Sponsoring Scientist: In the first application, I listed as my sponsoring scientist one of the top people in my general area. However, he knew little about my specific work and was not as interested in it as he might have been. In the second application, I was able to list a sponsoring scientist who was very interested in what I was doing. Presumably the committee notices this. 3) Letters in support of my application: This was a case where I was fortunate the 2nd time around. I was able to get a letter from one of the very best mathematicians in my field. Additionally, all of my letter writers knew my research well. The first time I had one or two professors who were not algebraists (my field is algebra). As a result, they presumably couldn't say much more than, "I had Mr. Bennett as a student in class x and he was good." A problem for many young mathematicians is finding enough recommenders who know their research. I don't have any good suggestions for solving this problem. The best way to meet people is to have your advisor introduce you. Barring this, you should go to as many conferences as possible and talk at as many as possible. I hope this proves helpful to those of you applying for an NSF postdoc. In another submission I have asked for members to send me copies of successful applications. I will make these available once I obtain them. Please do not request them yet. I will announce availability in the newsletter. Curtis Bennett _______________________________________________________________ Item #8 The Chalk Talk Room [ED's note: I hope this becomes a regular feature of the YMN Digest, where people can be comfortable asking and answering questions. To start, here is a letter from Andrew Price aprice@math.unm.edu .] I am a 27-year old graduate in Mathematics soon to graduate, hopefully this year and was interested to hear your point of view regarding job availability for the mathematical sciences. I certainly don't know if I'll find jobs easily when I graduate, especially in my area "geometry of partial differential equations". I'm wanting to consider jobs that although outside this area and perhaps outside mathematics, would make a good career for me. What can your group tell me about that? I was told that mathematicians could do anything since they had "general problem solving skills". I imagine all we need is an absolute desire to do something specific; the question might be "what should we do?" Or are we "too intellectually oriented" for the usual job market, so that most of us would be "too bored" with most jobs. I mainly want to know how I can find out what range of jobs are out there. yours sincerely, Andrew Price _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal Next week: Your comments and submissions, and a project: The Perfect Rejection Letter.