Math Seeks to Reverse Enrollment Declines

In wake of national problem, NSF grant funds initiative that includes new courses and lighter teaching duties

Friday, February 2, 2001

With a projected $2.4 million National Science Foundation grant over the next five years, Duke's department of mathematics is starting a new educational program designed to arrest a perplexing best-times, worst-times dilemma that has evolved during recent years: enrollment declines amid rising prestige. Blame the strong economy, which has also put pressure on other graduate programs besides math. "A lot of students have been finding jobs in industry directly from their undergraduate years," he said. "Graduate education in mathematics is in need of rethinking," he added. A third goal is "to guarantee that they progress through the pipeline, to increase their employment opportunities and possibilities," Hain said. "Within each of these training areas, new programs are being initiated, and that includes new courses for the students and new curricula," she said. "In addition, we will have students and postdocs interacting more - that's the vertical integration. And that will enhance their experiences while they're at Duke." For undergraduates, a key VIGRE feature is a two-year research initiative called Practical Research for Undergraduates with VIGRE, or PRUV, that pairs up to eight students from each year's junior class with faculty and graduate mentors, puts them in special courses, and focuses them on a research project culminating in a senior undergraduate thesis. Even before the grant award, the department introduced new undergraduate seminar courses like cryptography and physiology and medicine, all intended to increase students' enthusiasm for mathematics. Additional courses include heart dynamics, gravitational lensing and artificial intelligence. The infusion of grant money, combined with other Duke resources, also will free all participating graduate students of teaching duties during their first year so they can direct their energies into research and intensive course work. Even after the first year, the strongest VIGRE grad students will be released of teaching duties an additional one semester per year. "That's a way of getting them to speed through more quickly," Hain said. "Because one goal of the VIGRE program is to finish in five years, and finish strongly." The grant also will allow the department to hire two special VIGRE postdocs each year for three-year terms. Those will take on an expanded role in mentoring and advising teams of graduate and undergraduate research groups. "The postdocs will be acting as more of a cohesive link between the faculty and the students," Bertozzi said. One restriction, since this is a federally funded program, is that VIGRE postdocs must be United States citizens or permanent residents. That requirement does not apply to the department's other postdocs, who are hired as assistant research professors or teaching assistant professors. VIGRE will even reach into the high school levels of mathematics training, with its postdocs and students interacting with high school teachers to introduce high school students to using mathematics in research. The VIGRE grant begins at a time when graduate student enrollment in mathematics is on the rebound at Duke. Still, "it has been an enormous boost to get this grant," Hain said. "Before we even got it, it made us think about our undergraduate program, our graduate program and our postdocs. It made us think about what we do, and where we should be going. "The whole exercise was very useful."