*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 2, Issue 29 Sept. 21, 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 Robert Dobrow dobrow@cam.nist.gov , editor for the month of September. Next issue: Wednesday, Sept. 28. Editor for August: Kevin Madigan madigan@math.gwu.edu Editor for September: Bob Dobrow dobrow@cam.nist.gov Editor for October: Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu 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. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editor's notes 2 Letters to the Editor 3 News & Notes 4 Alerting Graduate Students to the YMN 5 Surrealism in Job Statistics 6 Advice on Graduate Programs 7 Closing Credits _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 EDITOR'S NOTES Two electronic resources are critically important for job seekers. First is the electronic bulletin board of the American Mathematical Society --- e-math --- which contains most listings of available job positions in mathematics. Telnet to e-math.ams.org or e-math.ams.com and enter e-math for the login id and the password. The "Professional Opportunities" selection contains employment and post-doctoral listings. You can also submit your resume. When you do so all active postings are automatically e-mailed to you and you receive notice of all new e-math employment postings. E-math tends to contain many of the available jobs at research institutions. The Chronicle of Higher Education---Academe This Week is on the Internet with listings of many job openings throughout academia. The address on the World Wide Web is http://chronicle.merit.edu/ A new edition of Academe This Week appears on the Internet every Tuesday at noon. Job listings can be searched by keywords and by geographic area. Job listings here tend to be from smaller and more teaching-oriented schools. With this issue of the *Concerns* we are reestablishing the "Letters to the Editor" column. We encourage all our readers to send in short comments, questions, praise, criticism, or just general spouting off. Mail your letters to the current editor. _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR REALLY enjoyed reading this issue of the Newsletter. Keep up the good work! --- Martha Siegel, Editor MATHEMATICS MAGAZINE ****************************************************** Because I have been active in asking questions concerning Ph.D. production, I wanted to mention my thoughts on PhD production reduction (a tongue twister). One problem with cutting PhD production is that many departments would lose faculty if their PhD program were cut back or eliminated. There are other reasons not to push to limit (outside of the market) production. In particular, the ideal situation is for a steady number of PhD's to be produced and for that number to almost exactly satisfy demand for PhD's. Of course, no one really knows what number of PhD's should be produced to match demand since the demand is a nontrivial function. My personal feeling is that we need to CHANGE how PhD's are prepared. In particular, we need the PhD program to be more than job training for academic research mathematicians. It isn't even necessary for schools to change their requirements for a PhD, merely that they use some honesty in alerting students to the situation, and stop considering the academic path as the only "good" one. In my recent interviews with mathematicians in industry, it is clear that industry sees most mathematics PhD's as completely unprepared for industry. Giving students the information of how to prepare themselves for industry and the information detailing the need to prepare for nonacademic employment I hope would be enough. After all, we are all adults. Given appropriate information, we can be expected to take care of ourselves. --- Curtis Bennett ************************************************************* I think one way to succeed in changing the way PhDs are prepared for the job market is for each department to see exactly how their graduates are employed. I think too many think that when they hear of one going into industry that that is the exception. If all departments would track their graduates for 5-10 years in detail, then perhaps reality would hit a bit closer to home. What do you think? --- Mark Winstead ************************************************************* I've found the proposals for NSF postdocs archived in YMN very helpful. It would also be interesting to learn people's opnion on how to choose the host institution and the senior sponsor there. I feel that even if you have a sound research plan and have good letters, if the senior faculty at the host institution appears not very enthusiasic about working with you, your chance is still quite dim. Am I right? On the other hand, it's not often that you can find someone that fits your interests just right, other than your advisor and/or your present institution and it seems not fair that only such people could get the fellowship. What have been other people's experiences? --- Li Guo/Ohio State _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 NEWS & NOTES Buried on page 803 of the September 1994 Notices is a statement that the November 1994 and December 1994 issues will be combined in order to "insure a smooth transition" to the new format of the Notices. Unfortunately, this may adversely affect the number and timing of job ads in the Notices this year, since November and December are key months for ads. This will make alternative sources of job ads even more important in the job search. _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 ALERTING GRADUATE STUDENTS TO THE YMN As the new academic year begins, I would like to encourage our readers to alert incoming graduate students to the YMN. As one of our main goals is to be a network providing information of interest to junior mathematicians, the YMN should benefit incoming graduate students. In particular, many of the articles concerning the job market have shown the importance of making preparations for the market before your last year of school. Ideally, students need to be thinking about their career options no later than their 3rd year of graduate school, to prepare to have the best chance in the job market of today. I encourage readers to consider posting an issue of the Concerns in their department, or better yet to talk about the YMN to the students and young faculty in their department who do not subscribe. Other ideas for dissemination include forwarding a copy to the chair of your department along with a cover letter informing why you think it important to let the graduate students know about the YMN. Remember, the YMN will do little good if new students don't learn about it. --- Curtis Bennett _______________________________________________________________ Item #5 SURREALISM IN JOB STATISTICS As we saw from the job survey that Curt Bennett published last week in these pages, last spring there were still lots of people without jobs. It is likely that some of those people delayed graduation, so that they could have another shot at finding academic employment this year. It would be perhaps good to have an idea of how often people delay graduation due to lack of luck when playing `job roulette'. There has been some discussion about the difficulty in gathering such information. The essential problem is that most schools CANNOT admit thay any PhD's delayed graduation: Basically, because allowing a PhD to delay graduation merely because of the lack of a job violates most schools' charters. Thus this widespread phenomenom cannot officially occur! Yet another example of how the employment situation for young mathematicians is warping reality. Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #6 ADVICE ON GRADUATE PROGRAMS A long time ago (last November, mea culpa) I asked YMN readers: Can YMN readers offer advice on graduate programs? I'd like to find out about supportive, structured Ph.D. programs in pure math. This will help me to better advise seniors planning to go to graduate school. Here at last is the long-awaited summary of replies. I've excerpted or paraphrased some of the points people made about their school. Most respondents recommended their school as having support of various sorts, and some kind of clear exam and course structure. One person wrote, sagely: The way for seniors considering a graduate school to find out what it is like is to ask. Go there and meet the current graduate students and see what kind of people they are. Ask them about the qualifying exams-- are they used as a weeding-out tool? If you can't go there, call and ask to be connected to some graduate students' offices. The secretaries should know more or less who would be willing to talk. If no one wants to talk to you about the place, take it as a sign that they might not be very helpful once you get there either. Women might like to find out how many other women are there as well. The number of women faculty at UVa is, shall we say, small, but about one third of the graduate students are women, so the environment is clearly welcoming. Another warned: Watch out--there's a lot of self serving propaganda out there. Furthermore, institutions tend to change rapidly. E.g., budget and grants can fall apart in only a few years. Yet another asked whether, in this tight job market, it was reasonable to hunt out a supportive grad school for a student who would not survive in the often more competitive atmosphere of one of the top-tier graduate schools. I responded, that while I made sure to advise my students of the risks that I saw their going to graduate school entailed (more risk for some students than others), especially in terms of eventually finding a job in academics, that if a student tells me, "Yes, I know all that, but I just want to go on studying mathematics because I like it so much", that then I felt that as their advisor it is my job to help them find a program that will work best for them and help them most on their chosen path, even if I think they may *eventually* come to think that theirs was perhaps a naive or ill-advised choice. (or hopefully they won't think so...certainly as I prepare myself to leave academics, one thing I do not regret is getting a Ph.D. in pure mathematics...although this is helped by the fact that I think it may be very possible to parlay my pure-math-Ph.D.-conferred geometric expertise into another job that actually needs someone like me who thinks clearly and geometrically). (Although I do think that if I knew then what I know now, I might have chosen to start graduate study part-time in computer science, gotten mucho tuition help from the company I was then working for, and currently be a happy, wealthy, fulfilled, and successful computer systems analyst specialising in geometric applications.) I digress...back to grad school recommendations. Mostly, I discovered from this survey what the statistically-sophisticated among us warn whenever the rest of us conduct one of these free-response internet polls---you can't tell anything from a self-selected sample. The only really concrete school recommendation I was left with at the end to make to my student was to suggest she look at U. of Virginia, simply because I had 4 responses from there, so *something* is going on there (perhaps it's just because Mark Winstead went to U.Va, so all the students are on YMN). Reading between the lines, one finds that what constitutes "adequate support" (financial, academic or emotional) for people varies widely, and so even when someone thinks theirs is a great program, I'm left with doubts. Here's a typical response where I have doubts about the program despite the respondent's reassurances: U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign By the way, my Master's work was at the Univ. of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which was certainly a friendly place to be with lots of teachng assistantships. But, I recall feeling a little "lost" in such a large department. If I was to return to Illinois I think I would be a little more forward in coming to know professors (and I suspect that the strategy might work). Overall a positive impression and some very good people too! Another thing that happens is two different people respond with diametrically opposed viewpoints: George Washington U. One person said: There are clear goals set for progress in academics with plenty of (non-conflicting) advice from faculty on how to reach these goals. The general atmosphere is very friendly. There is no barrier between faculty and grad students. In general I would recommend this department to any students in the right fields of interest. It is a small department and therefore can't cover all areas well. Another (who has since transferred to UVa) reports: I didn't see the graduate students at GWU helping one another and working together nearly as much, which was not really the fault of the department, but was a result of the fact that most of their graduate students are part-time, so working together on homework or studying for exams is not practical. Of course, the small number of responses, and the variety of schools mentioned, reminds one that there must be many programs across the country that are equally good, but just didn't show up in the replies. A few schools were mentioned as definite "stay-away-froms" for anyone looking for a supportive department: U. of California at Berkeley NO NO NO NO NO (has a particularly bad, and richly earned, reputation in regard to women) Princeton Very non-supportive U. of Illinois at Chicago Professors, money, secretaries, pay: all tight and not concerned with students The following 4 programs were described positively, but in fairly typical terms: "we have money, we have a program of intro courses and quals, it works for me and the students I know": Kansas State U. U. of Notre Dame U. of Chicago U. of Washington Among the descriptions of the following 10 programs, I found most interesting the various ways people described the way emotional support was created; so I've mostly excerpted comments touching on that. (They're arranged in roughly east-to-west order.) Dartmouth Our program is too small (it's hard to get a critical mass for advanced graduate courses), but the program is VERY suitable for students who wish to be college teachers at good liberal arts colleges with modest research expectations -- the business of training them to teach is taken extremely seriously at Dartmouth, and the grad students take a very intensive summer teaching seminar put together by Marcia Groszek and Dorothy Wallace (it is the equivalent of two courses, meets all morning all summer long, and covers virtually all aspects of college teaching). Surprisingly (in the current job climate), our recent graduates have done well on the job market. SUNY Albany Used to have much financial support, although some of the federal grant money for these fellowships may be gone soon, but I would strongly say that SUNYA is a very supportive place to get a PhD. Also, there is an air of commaraderie amongst the students. Cornell I found virtually everyone on the faculty with whom I came in contact to be enthusiastic and supportive; this even extended to faculty members quietly encouraging more senior graduate students to mentor and generally "look after" some of the first-year graduate students who were having a difficult time, either academically or emotionally. There was a very strong sense of excellent morale among the students, as well as a sense that the faculty was responsive to graduate student needs. U. of Virginia (FOUR people wrote to recommend UVa) We are very noncompetitive, which helps toward the "emotionally supportive" question. The students really really help one another instead of trying to appear as the star. The department encourages this, possibly unintentionally, by not singling out the stars. Duke Because of its relatively small size and I think very supportive faculty, there is a definite feeling of comradarie and support among the graduate students. U.Arkansas at Fayetteville -- good Everything in the department is done towards making the students comfortable and productive in their classes, teaching and research. This is not considered a prestigious school but was perfect for me and I was extremely happy there and accomplished alot. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor I came from a very small undergraduate math department (Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland), and have been very happy here at Michigan. Ohio State U. One of the best programs to *prepare* you for the qualifying exams. All students have a "headstart fellowship", arriving in early June to take summer courses designed to prepare them for quals in late September. The math graduate student body is large (170) but in spite of this there is close interaction with the 126 faculty. The 1.5-to-1 raio ensures that no advisors are "overworked", either (which means that students can get the advisors they want and have them spend time with them). Northwestern Students, not faculty, support other students (emotionally), but this support is definitely there and makes the program good. Became very welcoming to women in late 80's (classes became over 50% women for at least those years, and the women had higher completion rates than the men). U. Wisconsin at Madison The faculty has instituted an introductory-talks seminar for first and second year students. The faculty take turns giving talks on their research interests that are accessible to beginning graduate students. Many seminars, faculty, research areas, department colloquia, guest speakers. Hunting for jobs bad: I would recommend that any incoming graduate student think about taking an outside minor in statistics or computer science-- it may help them to get a job by qualifying them to teach a broader array of classes. --Sharon Pedersen pedersen@polar.bowdoin.edu (Brunswick, Maine) ______________________________________________________________ Item #7 CLOSING CREDITS The Young Mathematicians' Network is administered by: Charles Yeomans cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead mwwinst@gcr.com Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Vic Perera vperera@silver.ucs.indiana.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Kevin Madigan madigan@math.gwu.edu Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu Bob Dobrow dobrow@cam.nist.gov Lyle Cochran 74443.3055@compuserve.com Neil Calkin calkin@math.gatech.edu Wendy Brunzie brunzie@turing.ucdavis.edu Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Jeff Adams adams@bright.uoregon.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues