*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 3, Issue 2 Jan. 18, 1995 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. Please, direct submissions and questions to Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu , editor for the month of January. Next issue: Wednesday, 25 January. December Editor: Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu January Editor: Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu February Editor: Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu To subscribe: Contact Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Or connect to the YMN homepage on the WWW, the URL: http://ejc.math.gatech.edu:8080/YMN/ymn.html The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the administrative board or membership of the Young Mathematicians' Network. The editorial policy of this newsletter is to encourage discussion of issues, and facilitate the dissemination of information, relevant to the concerns of young mathematicians. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editor's notes 2 References for Writing Mathematical Papers 3 A Version of the AMS Cover Sheet where one can Typeset the Entries 4 A Journal Contents Database Service 5 Cutting Costs at Meetings 6 Job Hunting Advice: Let Them Know Which Position You Want 7 Tenure Under Pressure: A Washington Post Editorial 8 Supportive Practices and Ethics in the Employment of Young Mathematicians 9 Closing Credits _______________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editor's notes: I don't have a lot to say this week except that I'm pleased to have received many excellent submissions this week. I can personally attest to the usefulness of Tom Roby's submission (Item 3). Anyone who needs to typeset the entire AMS cover sheet (including their entries) may enjoy knowing that a working model of this is available. We are working on adding his TeX file to the ftp site. One suggestion for future submissions: Please include a title for your article, or the editor gets to make one up. Keep those cards and letters coming! -- Matt Hudelson, hudelson@math.washington.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 by Curtis Bennett References for Writing Mathematical Papers Due to the busy schedule of catching up on things after the meetings, I have not been able to get a column out these last couple of weeks. I will resume soon, but for now, let me pass along another couple of references on writing mathematical papers. Title: MATHEMATICAL WRITING Authors: Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, and Paul M. Roberts Mathematical Association of America. 128 pp., Paperbound, 1989, Revised 1990 ISBN 0-88385-063-X List: $16.50 Catalog Number NTE-14 Title: WRITING MATHEMATICS WELL Author: Leonard Gillman The Mathematical Association of America 64 pp., Paperbound, 1987 ISBN 0-88385-443-0 List: $8.00 MAA Member: $7.00 Catalog Number WMW Thanks to the reader who sent these in. Curtis Bennett cbennet@bgnet.bgsu.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 by Tom Roby A Version of the AMS Cover Sheet where one can Typeset the Entries I have rewritten the TeX version of the AMS cover sheet so that it's possible to typeset the data, while preserving all the lines and spacing (almost) exactly as the sheet was originally (even the original "overfull \*box errors are identical:-) It took a couple of hours of TeX hacking to get it all done correctly, and I was wondering if this was something others might be interested in. It's disappointing that the AMS provides forms for job seekers that *have* to be typewritten. The worst is the form for the employment register, where the instructions *insisted* that it be typed, not copied or typeset or any other format. The spaces provided are so small, that only an elite font (10pt) will fit. Most of the typewriters on our campus have disappeared--it was extremely difficult to find one with the smaller font. The cover sheet is complicated by including the "Indicate the position for which you are applying" which is different for each school. Otherwise one could just fill it out once and xerox it multiple times. By typesetting it and making a macro definition for the position, I was able to make individual copies along with my cover letter. It also looks better. My version of the sheet is available by anonymous ftp from the YMN ftp site; just replace my data with yours. Please direct any questions or comments to me, metis@reed.edu. Tom Roby, metis@reed.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 by Jon Clauss A Journal Contents Database Service Hope you all are getting your heads above water after the San Fran conference! In conversations with a couple people, I realized that a service that someone turned me on to might be helpful to others of you at smaller schools. Here at Augustana we have no research journals. To compensate I have made extensive use of CARL Uncover (Reveal). This is a database service in Colorado that will send you, via e-mail, the table of contents of journals of your choice, with full citation, free! They expect to make their money by having you order the articles through them at a fee. BUT, I have been able to get the articles free (granted it takes a bit longer) through inter-library loan. To access this service you need to do a telnet session: telnet database.carl.org at the prompt, choose vt100 (terminal type) at the menu, choose Uncover Now, since they want to sell you articles, they will ask you to set up an account (they will ask you for a profile and credit card information). But you don't need to do this if you are going to order stuff via inter-library loan. So hit enter a couple times (3 times, I believe) for Public Access. After doing this you will eventually have "NEW" as an option. From here you will want to create a profile for yourself (i.e., give your name, e-mail address, etc.) When you're done with that... At the prompt type NEW Select B to browse titles Type the name of the journal and select from list Type REVEAL at the end of the record. This has been an invaluable service to me. I get the table of contents of a half dozen journals as soon as they come out! I hope you guys find it useful! Jon Clauss, MACLAUSS@Augustana.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #5 by Mark Winstead Cutting Costs at Meetings Last week, Frank Sottile asked about cost cutting measures for the winter meetings. The AMS and MAA should be given some credit for the efforts they have already done. Key is the timing of the meeting. By choosing January, they have picked a time when air traffic is slow, so that there is a greater likelihood that discount fairs will be available. Also, January is the slowest time of the year for hotels near convention centers. Did you notice that the prices for San Francisco hotels weren't all that different from Cincinnati? The reason is that the winter meetings represent rooms that the hotels wouldn't be able to fill. Call that hotel you stayed in for the meeting and ask what the room would have cost you without the meeting discount, or what it will cost you in June. I am not saying a better job couldn't be done. Maybe it can. But I certainly like the idea that the San Diego, Orlando, and Baltimore airports (the airports serving the next three meetings) all have major discount airlines flying into them (Southwest flies into S.D. and Baltimore, and maybe Orlando too (I don't know)). Mark W. Winstead mwwinst@gcr.com Centreville, VA _______________________________________________________________ Item #6 by Brian Borchers Job Hunting Advice: Let Them Know Which Position You Want A bit of advice for job seekers- Make it very clear in your cover letter what position(s) you're applying for. This year, our department has two positions- a tenure track position in applied mathematics and a visiting position in operations research. When a letter comes in, a secretary from the human resources department decides which of the two positions (possibly both) the applicant is applying for. This is difficult when the cover letter says something like "I'm applying for a position as an assistant professor.." So far, we've been able to correct all of the obvious cases in which an application ended up in the wrong pile, but I wouldn't be surprised if we missed one or two. Departments at larger schools with several positions and hundreds of applications might not be so careful. Brian Borchers borchers@nmt.edu Deparmtent of Mathematics 505-835-5813 New Mexico Tech Socorro, NM 87801 ______________________________________________________________ Item #7 provided by Mark Winstead The following is a reprint of an editorial appearing on page A16 in the Washington Post on January 11, 1995: Tenure Under Pressure For many years tenure was the great sacred cow of academia, hailed as the guarantor of academic freedom and long-term institutional stability. Though tenure itself is still solidly rooted in most of higher education, the days of its status as unquestioned good are gone--and if a symbol were needed of the moment it ended, it might be Dec. 29, when the eminent Yale literature professor Harold Bloom observed in passing, in answer to a question during an appearance on "The Charlie Rose Show," that tenure might better be abolished. The professor was making not a considered policy proposal but a rhetorical point connected to a question about term limits for government officials. Still, the attention the comment sparked in academic circles reflects a growing unhappiness among not just outside critics of academia but also administrators trying to rein in costs and--not least--the hordes of young scholars hopelessly bottlenecked at the sluggishly moving economy where many fields see only one or two good job openings in the country per year. Professor Bloom is not the only voice that has been heard wondering whether there might not be some better way to safeguard the benefits tenure affords while easing the distorted effect it has on much of the academic economy. Tenure's current status dates from the post-McCarthy era and was based on fears that professors were uniquely vulnerable to job pressure because of their political views--and uniquely in need of protection so as to be able to pursue their teaching and research free of political interference or reprisal. This idea, in turn, harks back to a much older image, that of the cloistered, monkish scholar pursuing his labors for decades, safely insulated from the pressures of the outside world. The image has its nostalgic appeal, but it is a long way from reality on most campuses these days. The absence of pressure on tenured scholars to teach redoubles the burden on younger, nontenured or, increasingly, non-tenure-track staff who are hired as temporary labor because no permanent jobs are likely to open up. The annual Modern Language Association conference last week was occasion for the venting of that unhappiness among young scholars who complain they can only get short-term and nomadic teaching work. Schools that move in this direction can often save a great deal of money. Some put the level of such part-timers as high as 40 percent. Meanwhile, the ivory-tower quality of even the tenured population has little in common with the ideal anymore; among some academics, such as those on the faculties of professional schools, it is fashionable as well as profitable to engage heavily in outside consulting work, while the star system makes the most visible scholars skip around in a variety of non-cloistered activities that bring prominence to the school and the department. As for academic freedom, the much-lamented decline in campus civility and the rise in hair-trigger political sensitivity has led to a situation where, once a political storm blows up, tenure does not always afford absolute protection anyway. As the pressure on universities increases and the academic life grows less livable, the temptation to reform some of tenure's glaring weirdnesses grows. Any adjustment shouldn't be seen as an attack on academia from outside but as a way academia can reform and renew itself. ______________________________________________________________ Item #8 provided by Steve Kennedy The following is a copy of the resolution "Supportive Practices and Ethics in the Employment of Young Mathematicians" as passed by the MAA provided to Steve Kennedy from Ken Ross. It differs slightly from the AMS/AWM version. ************************************************************** Here's the text of the Employment Practices resolution passed in San Francisco by the MAA Board of Governors. It is slightly different from the resolution passed by AMS/AWM last year. (Thanks to Ken Ross for sending this on.) SUPPORTIVE PRACTICES AND ETHICS IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF YOUNG MATHEMATICIANS 1. For several years now, there have been substantially fewer Ph.D.-level positions available in mathematics than qualified applicants. See, e.g., the report of the AMS Task Force on Employment reviewed in the AMS Notices, Oct. 1992, pp. 820-821, and the survey of new doctorates, AMS Notices, Nov. 1993, p. 1164. The disparity between supply and demand has caused severe difficulties for some recent Ph.D.'s. There is no indication that the situation will ease significantly in the near future. It is incumbent on mathematics departments to make all their potential Ph.D.'s aware of the realities of the job market and to encourage them to prepare for a broad range of jobs in the mathematical sciences. 2. The early post-Ph.D. years are crucial in career development. Departments have a responsibility to promote such development. Employment practices should conform to this principle. The systematic use of one-year appointments to fill regular teaching positions has the potential for exploitation of those holding such positions. Young mathematicians in one-year positions with full teaching loads must, in addition to carrying out their duties and trying to establish and maintain their own scholarly program, begin again searching for a job almost immediately after settling in - a concentration of pressures which will almost certainly have adverse effects on professional growth and morale. Colleges and universities should strenuously seek means to offer new Ph.D.'s positions of at least two years duration in order to allow for the crucial career development in teaching, research, and service that our profession expects at this stage. 3. Although many institutions are under severe financial pressure, they should resist exploitation. Colleges and universities should recognize that part-time appointments and the practice of hiring unemployed Ph.D.'s by the course, without integrating them into the scholarly life of the department, are seriously detrimental to the individuals and the profession. ______________________________________________________________ Item #9 The Young Mathematicians Network is administered by: Charles Yeomans cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead mwwinst@gcr.com Nancy Wilson nwilson@stmarys-ca.edu Emil Volcheck Emil.Volcheck@risc.uni-linz.ac.at Frank Sottile sottile@math.toronto.edu Vic Perera vperera@silver.ucs.indiana.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Kevin Madigan madigan@math.nwu.edu Leigh Lunsford lunsford@math.uah.edu Steve Kennedy skennedy@mathcs.carleton.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu Bob Dobrow dobrow@cam.nist.gov Lyle Cochran address change pending Kevin Charlwood kec1@bradley.bradley.edu Neil Calkin calkin@math.gatech.edu Wendy Brunzie brunzie@mathfs.math.montana.edu Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues