IGERT: A Joint Graduate Program in Applied Mathematics and the Earth & Environmental Sciences

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Columbia University is establishing a new, multi-departmental graduate program in Applied Mathematics and the Earth & Environmental Sciences. The aim of this new IGERT Joint Program is to train a new generation of scientists whose level of mathematical sophistication will be considerably higher than that of typical students currently graduating from earth and environmental science programs and, at the same time, whose familiarity with the important issues and major open research questions in the earth and environmental sciences will be much deeper that what is usually expected of students trained uniquely within applied mathematics departments. To achieve this goal, five departments at Columbia - Mathematics, Statistics, Applied Physics & Applied Mathematics, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Earth & Environmental Engineering - under the coordinating role of the Columbia Earth Institute, will collaboratively train graduate students under this new IGERT Joint Program. While students in the IGERT Joint Program will be individually admitted by each department, their progress will be monitored by a Steering Committee of faculty associated with the Joint Program. In addition to satisfying the requirements of the departments into which they are admitted, all students in the Joint Program will take a new integrated two-semester sequence in Applied Mathematics specifically tailored to issues and problems in the global environmental sciences, and will be expected to earn a minimum number of credits in both mathematical and earth science courses. In addition, they will be expected to attend a weekly colloquium organized by the Joint Program, give a formal presentation of their research results once a year to the faculty and other students affiliated with the Joint Program, attend special series of invited lectures, assist in the mentoring of undergraduates, and complete a one summer internship during their graduate training at a research institution, national laboratory, or industrial research center.IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the fifth year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.