*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 2 Issue 6 February 16, 1994 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 Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu , editor for the month of February. Next issue: Wednesday, February 23, 1994. To subscribe: Send mail to Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Editor for November was Steve Kennedy kennedy@math.stolaf.edu . Editor for December was Vic Perera vperera@silver.ucs.indiana.edu . Editor for January was Kalin Godev kalin@math.psu.edu . The opinions expressed herein are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the YMN or the editorial board. Table of Contents Item # Title 1 Editor's Comments 2 Comments, News, and Notes *AMS Task Force on Employment *AMS-MAA meeting in Eugene,OR *Query from a reader *Attracting Graduate Students to Meetings 3 Employment Situation in the Sciences *Chronicle of Higher Education/Science *Physics 4 Reader Survey Results Curtis Bennett 5 Interviews: What to Expect Curtis Bennett 6 Open Forum at the Brooklyn Meeting of the AMS-CORRECTION 7 Closing Credits __________________________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editor's Comments Many apologies to one and all about the delay in last week's issue. It went from here to Kentucky with no problems, but the storm caused problems in Central Kentucky. The mailing of most copies was delayed due to system repair and maintenance-mailing lists tend to have very low priority in any system. Much ado this week about employment. Charles suggests one read February 15's Wall Street Journal to see it in today's news. We have numerous items relating to employment. Discussions in Brooklyn and Eugene (note the corrected address sent to us), reports available, articles on math and physics in several publications, and Curt's helpful pointers to interviewee's (I concur with much of what he says, even though it means competetive interviews will reduce the ratio of offers to interviews for some of us). Curtis also has sent the results of the survey together with his comments. We need greater participation from successful people to help one another succeed, especially in the areas our readers want more information. We're also investigating improving our mailing system to get things to you faster. ____________________________________________________________________ Item #2 Comments, News, and Notes: ******************************************************************** AMS Task Force on Employment The report "EMPLOYMENT AND THE U.S. MATHEMATICS DOCTORATE: REPORT OF THE AMS TASK FORCE ON EMPLOYMENT, JULY 1992 is now available on the e-math gopher. ********************************************************************* AMS-MAA meeting in Eugene, Oregon, June 16-18, 1994 Ken Ross, University of Oregon There will be a regional AMS-MAA meeting in Eugene, Oregon, June 16-18, 1994. I will be moderating a panel discussion on "Sensitivity and understanding of the job market." The panel will consist of three people who have recently been on the job market (Charles Mannix, University of Washington; Tom McKenzie, Bradley University; Jenny McNulty, University of Montana) and three people who have been department chairs involved with hiring (Howard Gage, Whitworth College; Douglas Lind, University of Washington; Julie H. Lutz, Washington State University). ********************************************************************* Query from a Reader I have recieved some anecdotal evidence that the number of people applying for jobs this year is significantly less than in recent years. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that when the University of Missouri sent me an acknowledgement of recipt of my application they stated that 380 people had also applied. This number is significantly less than numbers that I have heard comparable institutions have recieved in recent years. There is also a rumour going around teh University of Chicago that they received significantly fewer applications this year. The other anecdotes I have heard are to vague to print. I ask the readership of CoYMN if they have any figures to refute or support this rumour. Frank Sottile, University of Chicago frank@math.uchicago.edu ********************************************************************* To grad students not about to graduate While in Cincinnati at the winter meetings, I was engaging in conversation with two prominent members of the AMS hierarchy (one high-ranking "permanent" staff and one high-ranking elected official) when one of the two switched the conversation to the issue of getting nominee members more involved in the AMS. Typically the only things graduate students do is perhaps vote and perhaps go to the winter meetings the year they graduate. Any ideas? I will happily relay them on to them. By the way, they did not ask me not to mention their names. I just don't know whether or not they wanted their names mentioned and I know that like many of us they can be slow to answer e-mail, so rather than ask then wait ... Some things to consider for ideas are events that could be held at national and sectional meetings that would attract graduate students. Mark Winstead winstead@euclid.ucsd.edu ______________________________________________________________________ Item #3 Employment Situation in the Sciences ******************************************************************** A) Chronicle of Higher Education, Science M. Salah Baouendi A short story appeared in the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION (Feb. 16, '94) on our ethics resolution under the title: ""The American Mathematical Society has condemned what it calls the "systematic hiring" of unemployed Ph.D.'s on a part-time basis by colleges."" The editor of the Chronicle told me she is preparing a longer article on the employment crisis for scientists; she is planning to write more about our resolution. One of SCIENCE editors assured me that a short story will appear this Friday in Science. I heard he has been calling some math departments chairs to verify independently the part-time hiring facts. Thanks to all those who have helped with this. Particular thanks to Jim Maxwell and Tim Goggins. ********************************************************************** B) 'Physics News Update' # 163 (Feb 4 1994), sci.physics.research: THE PHYSICS JOB MARKET IS TIGHT FOR NEW PH.Ds. In 1992, for instance, roughly 800 physics openings in the U.S. became available. Of these, 440 (representing 5.5% of the faculty) were at academic institutions; 175 were at industrial labs (a turnover of 5%); and 180 were at national labs. Competing for these jobs were many of the 1346 new PhDs (some of whom went abroad -- see Update 159) and a growing number of immigrant physicists from the former Soviet Union. In the face of this physics jobs squeeze, the number of new physics PhDs awarded each year in the U.S. has increased by 45% over the past decade. One response to this dilemma, at Cornell University, has been to retain some young PhDs as part-time lecturers and to reduce by a comparable amount the number of new graduate student admissions. (Physics Today, December 1993.) ___________________________________________________________________ Item #4 Reader Survey Curtis Bennett I finally finished talleying up the surveys. I apologize for the delay. I received 136 surveys back in November, representing about a quarter of our subscribers at that time. Of that number, the breakdown by year of obtaining the Ph.D. is: before 1985: 12% The membership is about 24% women if 1985-1988: 13% this was an accurate sample. 1989: 3% 1990: 7% 1991: 4% 1992: 14% 1993: 12% grad student: 32% undergrad: 1% other: 1% The employment distribution of the responders who had received their Ph.D. prior to Jan. 1, 1994 was: tenured: 18% tenure track: 35% 2+-year positions: 19% 1-year positions: 16% part time: 4% industry: 3% other: 7% This totals to 102% since some categories overlapped. As I think can be seen from this data, it would be nice to get more industrial mathematicians to subscribe. Not surprisingly, almost all of the tenured people received their degrees before 1985. I suppose the greatest surprise to me was the small number of subscribers who received their degrees during the period from 1989-1991 - the period I belong to. As concerns comments, the most common desire was for the YMN to get information about employment in industry -- Last week we had our first long article on applying to industry. I hope that in the coming months we will have several more. I am in the process of contacting a variety of mathematicians currently working in industry to ask them for similar articles. I have at least one firm commitment, and several less firm commitments. Several of the other editors are also working to obtain more information about industry. The second most common desire was for the YMN to start publishing articles on how to go about continuing one's career. That is, how to publish papers, how to balance teaching and research, how to continue research, etc. I hope that we will be able to get a series of articles started on these issues before long. I will encourage anybody who has anything to say on the topic to please submit articles. Finally, for all of you who are wondering about the NSF proposal files, I am afraid that to this date I have received only one successful grant proposal. This was for a Research Planning Grant which is different from a standard grant proposal. I will try and get it put into the YMN archive in the next couple of weeks. Yet again, I will ask any subscribers who have written successful grant proposals (NSF, NSA, or similar grants) to please consider sending copies of the files to be put in an archive. I would also like to ask those of you who have been fortunate enough to receive NSF Postdocs to also consider sending in your research proposals for archive. As a brief comment, if you wish to delete your name from the proposal, please feel free to do so. Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu ______________________________________________________________________ Item #5 A Brief Discussion of On Campus Interviews Curtis Bennett This is an article about on campus interviews. I have been through four on campus interviews in the last two years, in which I received 1.75 offers. The .75 of an offer arose from a case where the money for the position dried up after the department voted to hire me, but before the dean authorized the position. This by no means makes me an expert, and I don't want to pass myself off as such. These are just comments by somebody who has been there and is now on the other side. As a further remark, some of these comments may only be appropriate for an interview with a research university. What to expect at an interview: In general, you will be meeting with a large number of people in one day. A short list of some of the people you should expect to see: 1. Department Chair. 2. Dean. 3. Hiring Committee. 4. Vice President in charge of research (at research schools). 5. Faculty in your area. There will be others that you are likely to see depending on where you are interviewing. You will also be taken to lunch and dinner. In addition you will be expected to give a talk. Comments and Suggestions: Some of the following may be obvious, but I have known several applicants who would have benefitted from them. 0. BEFORE the interview, find out about the research of the people you would work with at the school. You can do this by looking up recent papers in the Math Reviews. This way you show that you have done your homework. Also, it is good to ask members of the department about their mathematical interests. Be careful not to ask the question in a way that implies they should be doing active research. Some members of the department might not be active researchers any more. The phrase 'mathematical interests' is a good one. 1. Try to be a likeable person. The last thing any department wants is a member who is hard to get along with. In particular, don't insult ANYBODY. Don't insult other fields of mathematics (including math ed., logic, statistics, group theory, etc.). You won't win many friends by ridiculing others, and you never know how the person you are talking to may feel about these fields. In your talk don't play down contributions from other fields or other mathematicians. Again, you might step on somebody's toes. Certainly, if I am in an audience and an analyst tells us that "the only contribution group theory has ever made to mathematics is this small lemma..." I am going to be disposed to vote against this candidate when decision time comes around. 2. When talking with the dean, be ready to answer if the dean asks you about your research. Assuming this question is stupid won't help your chances. I would have a couple of answers ready to be used depending on whether the dean is in the hard sciences or not. Also, don't assume the dean doesn't know anything about mathematics. This can lead to embarrassment when you find out he was a professor in the math department. Most places will tell you what field the dean is in, so pay attention. 3. Find out who the audience will be for your talk. If you prepare a talk for mathematicians and then find out you are talking to a group of faculty members from many different departments, you are in trouble. Some schools want you to talk to undergraduates, some to a subset of the entire faculty, some to the math department faculty. At Bowling Green State, I gave the mathematics colloquium talk at my interview which was intended for graduate students and faculty. I also would be careful that the talk doesn't blow everyone away. If you are talking to a research school, then you can take off at the very end, although I think you should still have a few members of your audience who understand what you are talking about. If you are talking to smaller schools, you are better off if people are following you throughout the talk. At research schools, your talk should be about your research (although you should still check with the chair as to what the audience will be and the breadth of their interests). However, don't begin your talk with: "We are interested in the case where a hemi-semi-quaver-group acts on a right handed spin module..." Give basic definitions, and give motivation. Many of the people in your audience will have little idea where your research fits into the grand scheme of things. Let them know. 4. Lunch and dinner are almost always part of the interview process. Don't forget this. I know of a case where a candidate blew his chances at lunch. If somebody wants to talk about textbooks and classes, don't change the topic. There is certainly time for family chit-chat and the sort, but don't stop people from asking you questions during the meals. 5. My feeling is that you are better off to arrive the night before. At one of my interviews, I was 3 hours late because I had an accident driving to the interview. I missed my meeting with the dean, and basically killed my chances at the job. 6. Of course you should ask questions, and there were some good ones mentioned in Volume 2 #4. But most of all, be yourself. If you try to be someone you aren't, you won't be comfortable, and it will be obvious. This is your chance to see if you would like being at the school, and the school's chance to see if they want you. _______________________________________________________________________ Item #6 Open Forum at the AMS Eastern Sectional Meeting- Correction Volume 2, Issue 5 of CYM announced an open forum on issues related to the employment of mathematicians at the AMS Eastern Sectional Meeting at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY. The forum, scheduled for 2:30-4:00 on Saturday, April 9, is being sponsored by the AMS Committee on the Profession (CoProf). Written statements should be submitted by March 30, and they can be sent by electronic mail to emp-forum@math.ams.org [note corrected email address] or mailed to CoProf Subcommittee on Employment Issues, Attn: Diane Mack, American Mathematical Society, P.O. Box 6248, Providence, RI 02940. __________________________________________________________________________ Item #7 Closing Credits: The Young Mathematicians' Network is administered by: Charles Yeomans cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead winstead@euclid.ucsd.edu Vic Perera vperera@silver.ucs.indiana.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Stephen Kennedy kennedy@stolaf.edu Kalin Godev kalin@math.psu.edu Neil Calkin calkin@math.gatech.edu Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu Jeff Adams adams@bright.uoregon.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu ____________________________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues