Workshops on Professional Master's Degree Programs in Mathematics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Three organizations, the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Mathematicians and Education Reform (MER) Forum, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), propose to organize national workshops to provide a venue for departments to become well-informed about recommendations for graduate studies and existing professional master's degree programs, and gain practical knowledge for planning and implementing their own professional master's degree program. Approximately 60 representatives from 35 to 40 departments of mathematical sciences will participate in the workshops. The mathematics community is being challenged to examine and revise graduate education to meet the needs of a variety of constituencies for individuals with strong foundations in the mathematics relating to their profession, and to provide viable employment paths for graduates with advanced degrees in mathematics. Promoting the development of professional master's degree programs is an important way to begin to address these concerns. Through a multifaceted program centered on two workshops, the project will enable mathematics departments to make informed responses to the challenges to graduate studies by focusing on helping mathematics departments in planning and implementing professional master's degree programs, and by developing resources to help departments in these efforts. Creating a forum in which departments can evaluate the role of professional master's degree programs with respect to the general issues in graduate education enables departments to strengthen their graduate programs. The workshops offer a constructive approach to explore a broader role for the mathematics community to support mathematics, and to form ties between mathematics and disciplines and professions in which mathematics is a crucial component. The workshop discussions on developing professional master's degree programs will be given broad exposure in the mathematics community. Information gathered for the workshop s, and the resources developed for the participating departments will be made available to the mathematics community. The organizing committee for the workshops includes representatives of the three cooperating organizations.