VIGRE at UT-Austin

UT-奥斯汀分校 VIGRE

• 批准号: 0091946
• 负责人: David Saltman
• 金额: $ 389.7万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-07-01 至 2008-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0091946&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: VIGRE; UT; Austin

AbstractSaltmanThis VIGRE project showcases a rapidly expanding commitment by the Department of Mathematics to foster multidisciplinary education and research activities, as a natural part of our dedication to excellence in mathematics. This commitment is behind the ever increasing partnership between the Department of Mathematics of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (TICAM), an independent unit with participation from a large number of engineering and science departments. The VIGRE project's central goal is to improve the quality of training that future mathematical scientists, from undergraduate mathematics majors to postdoctoral researchers, experience at UT. In keeping with the department's commitment, many of the UT VIGRE activities have a pronounced multidisciplinary flavor. By placing greater emphasis on how mathematics interacts with the larger intellectual, scientific, and public communities, we hope not only to provide aspiring mathematical scientists with a firm grounding in the subject's core, as we have always done, but also to give them a glimpse of (and better prepare them for) the multitude of career opportunities that now present themselves to members of the work force commanding highly developed mathematical skills. With the aid of VIGRE funding, the department will stimulate the formation of a local educational landscape in which activities that successfully exploit the combined talents of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members are striking features. Running the gamut from new courses and seminars to research experiences, the program will aggressively promote increased cooperation on the UT campus between mathematics and other disciplines. UT is a comprehensive research institution whose charter contains the explicit constitutional mandate to be "a university of the first class." Superimposed upon that mandate is UT's stated mission of serving all the citizens of an enormous state with an extremely diverse population. In its continuing endeavor to contribute to this mission, the Department of Mathematics has assembled a world-class team of scholars and teachers. To a large extent, this faculty represent in their research interests the traditional core areas of mathematics, where the strength of the department has historically resided. On the other hand, recent faculty appointments reflect our decision to dedicate a significant portion of the department's resources to the interdisciplinary side of mathematics. Developments in this direction received a major boost from the creation of TICAM, in whose operation the department is deeply involved. But the department's commitment to interdisciplinary mathematics goes beyond the founding strengths of TICAM, to embrace financial mathematics, computational and mathematical biology.Training of students, both graduate and undergraduate, are the focal points of this VIGRE project. The framework in which such training takes place should be a set of programs geared to move students as effectively as possible toward their degrees. A prime objective of the UT VIGRE Graduate Traineeship component is to lower our average time to the doctorate to five years. Given the high quality of our recent students, we believe that we can achieve this end by the obvious means; namely, by freeing more of our Ph.D. students from hour-consuming teaching duties. At the same time-and it requires a delicate balancing act to get the desired results here without upsetting the five-year-to-the-Ph.D. applecart-we have engineered certain VIGRE activities to increase opportunities for graduate students to explore realms of the mathematical sciences that extend well beyond their areas of specialization. Some of the specific activities that will be initiated to add scientific and professional value to the UT graduate experience of VIGRE trainees are the following: participation in a "junior" research seminar, where graduate students, undergraduates, and postdocs will give presentations under the supervision of a senior faculty member; participation in a multidisciplinary research proseminar directed at first-year graduate students that will provide them with an informal overview of the variety of mathematical research that is being done locally by faculty, postdocs, and advanced graduate students; serving as the member of a vertically integrated team supervising an individual VIGRE undergraduate research project; serving as a "facilitator" in the VIGRE summer REU program, in which our sister schools in the UT system have been invited to participate; involvement in a VIGRE computational finance research program (which will also have undergraduate and postdoctoral components).The department's baccalaureate degree programs have in great measure been shaped by the dictates of the educational agenda at a major state university (e.g., we are expected to train a large number of mathematics teachers for Texas's elementary and secondary schools). We now have in place a strong core curriculum designed to give our majors a command of mathematics at a level that allows them either to pursue graduate degrees in the mathematical sciences or to secure mathematics related employment. VIGRE funding will enable us to enrich and enliven the undergraduate experience with research opportunities of various types: wide scale involvement in individual research projects; participation in research-oriented seminars, including a new multidisciplinary research proseminar that will be a clearing house for undergraduate research projects; participation in the multidisciplinary summer REU program cited in the previous paragraph; improved access to the Dean's Scholars Program, a nationally recognized interdisciplinary honors program in the College of Natural Sciences. Each of these activities will be encased in a vertically integrated structure. The VIGRE summer REU programs, in particular, are geared to expand the mathematical horizons of students. The topics slated to be treated in these programs over the life of the award are: wavelets and signal processing, mathematical biology, mathematical finance, computational number theory and cryptography.Although UT is presently one of the largest universities in the country, the size of the department's tenured or tenure-track faculty is quite modest, numbering fifty-two in Fall 2000. The UT Administration, not wishing to see the research activity of a small but distinguished faculty totally overwhelmed by instructional duties, compensates for this disproportion in size by giving the department a generous supply of postdoctoral positions. Each year our faculty includes roughly two dozen new or very recent Ph.D. recipients who are appointed to Postdoctoral Instructorships or Research Lectureships, with teaching loads the same as those of regular faculty members (i.e., at most two classes per semester). Most of the postdocs who have held these positions over the years have departed from UT with well-established research programs and highly developed teaching skills. Through the use of VIGRE funds, we will improve the UT postdoctoral experience by decreasing teaching loads for selected instructors, thereby releasing more time for them to devote to research, and by creating opportunities for all postdocs to participate in a rich array of vertically integrated professional development activities. For example, virtually all of the graduate and undergraduate VIGRE activities indicated earlier will find VIGRE postdocs involved in an integral way.Our goal, and the goal of this VIGRE project, is to help our postdocs, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, grow intellectually and mathematically in a way that allows them to take advantage of a mathematical world enriched and energized by its connections to the larger world of science, engineering, and society.

这个VIGRE项目展示了数学系对促进多学科教育和研究活动的迅速扩大的承诺，作为我们致力于卓越数学的自然组成部分。这一承诺是德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校数学系（UT）与德克萨斯计算与应用数学研究所（TICAM）之间不断增加的合作伙伴关系的背后，该研究所是一个由大量工程和科学部门参与的独立单位。VIGRE项目的核心目标是提高未来数学科学家（从本科数学专业到博士后研究人员）在德州大学的培训质量。为了与部门的承诺保持一致，许多UT VIGRE活动具有明显的多学科风味。通过更加强调数学如何与更大的知识分子、科学和公共社区相互作用，我们不仅希望为有抱负的数学科学家提供学科核心的坚实基础，正如我们一直所做的那样，而且希望让他们瞥见（并更好地为他们做好准备）大量的职业机会，这些机会现在呈现在掌握高度发达的数学技能的工作队伍成员面前。在VIGRE基金的帮助下，该部门将促进当地教育景观的形成，其中成功地利用本科生，研究生，博士后研究员和教职员工的综合才能的活动是显着的特征。从新课程和研讨会到研究经验，该项目将积极促进UT校园数学和其他学科之间的合作。德克萨斯大学是一所综合性研究机构，其章程中明确规定要成为“一流大学”。与此相辅相成的是德州大学的既定使命，即服务于一个人口极其多样化的庞大国家的所有公民。数学系为了完成这一使命，已组建了一支世界级的学者和教师队伍。在很大程度上，这些教师在他们的研究兴趣中代表了数学的传统核心领域，这是该系历史上的实力所在。另一方面，最近的教员任命反映了我们决定将部门资源的很大一部分用于数学的跨学科方面。在这个方向上的发展受到了TICAM创建的重大推动，该部门深入参与其运作。但该系对跨学科数学的承诺超越了TICAM的创始优势，包括金融数学、计算和数学生物学。对研究生和本科生的培训是VIGRE项目的重点。这种培训的框架应该是一套旨在使学生尽可能有效地获得学位的课程。UT VIGRE研究生培训项目的一个主要目标是将我们获得博士学位的平均时间缩短到五年。鉴于我们最近学生的高质量，我们相信我们可以通过显而易见的手段实现这一目标；也就是说，把更多博士生从耗时的教学任务中解放出来。与此同时，这需要一种微妙的平衡，才能在不扰乱攻读五年博士学位的情况下获得理想的结果。applecart-我们设计了一些VIGRE活动来增加研究生探索数学科学领域的机会，这些领域远远超出了他们的专业领域。为增加VIGRE受训者在UT研究生经历的科学和专业价值，将开展的一些具体活动如下：参加“初级”研究研讨会，研究生、本科生和博士后将在一名高级教员的监督下发表演讲；参加针对一年级研究生的多学科研究研讨会，让他们非正式地了解当地教师、博士后和高级研究生正在进行的各种数学研究；作为一个垂直整合团队的成员，指导VIGRE本科生的个人研究项目；作为VIGRE夏季REU项目的“推动者”，我们在UT系统中的姐妹学校被邀请参加；参与VIGRE计算金融研究计划（也将包括本科和博士后组成部分）。该系的学士学位课程在很大程度上是由一所主要州立大学的教育议程决定的（例如，我们被期望为德克萨斯州的小学和中学培养大量的数学教师）。我们现在有一个强大的核心课程，旨在让我们的专业学生掌握一定水平的数学知识，使他们能够继续攻读数学科学的研究生学位，或者确保与数学相关的就业。VIGRE的资助将使我们能够丰富和活跃本科生的研究经历，并提供各种研究机会：广泛参与个别研究项目；参加面向研究的讨论会，包括一个新的多学科研究专题讨论会，它将成为本科生研究项目的交流中心；参加前项多学科暑期REU项目；改善了院长学者计划的机会，这是自然科学学院全国公认的跨学科荣誉计划。这些活动中的每一个都将被封装在一个垂直整合的结构中。特别是VIGRE夏季REU课程，旨在扩大学生的数学视野。在该奖项的整个生命周期内，这些项目将处理的主题是：小波和信号处理、数学生物学、数学金融、计算数论和密码学。虽然德州大学目前是全国最大的大学之一，但该系的终身教职或终身教职教师的规模相当有限，2000年秋季只有52人。德州大学行政部门不希望看到一个人数不多但杰出的教师的研究活动完全被教学职责所淹没，因此通过给该部门提供大量的博士后职位来补偿这种规模上的不平衡。每年，我们的教师包括大约24名新的或最近的博士学位获得者，他们被任命为博士后讲师或研究讲师，教学负荷与常规教师相同（即每学期最多两节课）。多年来，大多数担任这些职位的博士后都是带着完善的研究项目和高度发达的教学技能离开德克萨斯大学的。通过VIGRE基金的使用，我们将通过减少选定教师的教学负担来改善UT博士后的体验，从而为他们腾出更多的时间用于研究，并为所有博士后创造机会参与丰富的垂直整合的专业发展活动。例如，前面提到的几乎所有研究生和本科生VIGRE活动都将发现VIGRE博士后以一种整体的方式参与。我们的目标，以及这个VIGRE项目的目标，是帮助我们的博士后，以及研究生和本科生，在智力和数学上成长，使他们能够利用数学世界与科学、工程和社会的更大世界的联系而丰富和充满活力。