Mount Holyoke Undergraduate Mathematics Summer Research Institute

从2004年到2008年，芒特霍利奥克学院数学系每年夏天都会为本科生开设一个数学暑期研究站。参与REU计划向学生介绍数学研究机构的生活。我们将从众多美国高校中选出10名学生从事数学研究。学生将以五或六人为一组，在一名教师的监督下，每组执行一个不同的项目。这些项目将针对数学研究的主流领域，通常涉及广泛的计算机实验和计算。我们的计划的一个重要信息是，例子的力量阐明，并可能克服，目前在纯理论攻击的僵局。这些小组每天会单独会面几次，但会为不同小组的学生提供充足的机会来交流想法。学生们计划、组织并在他们自己的系列研讨会上发言，参加并在该计划的每周研讨会上发言，参加并在地方和国家会议上发言。在这个小组环境中，学生们以一种非常具体的方式学习深刻的概念，这种密集的接触在两个方面帮助他们在研究生院。首先，学生在研究生院的第一年准备得更好，因为他们已经掌握了这些概念。其次，更重要的是，reexperience教会学生如何接受一个新概念并充实它，使用例子和问题，直到他们获得基本的直觉。最后，我们项目的每个学生都写了一份他或她的作品的预印本，这些预印本可以在我们的网站上找到。出版物和荣誉论文往往是夏季工作的结果。

The mathematics department at Mount Holyoke College will operate a mathematics summer research site for undergraduates each summer from 2004-2008. Participation in the REU program introduces students to what life is like at a mathematical research institution.We will select ten students drawn from a broad range of U.S. colleges and universities to engage in mathematical research. The students will work in groups of five or six, each group carrying out a different project under the supervision of a faculty member. The projects will be directed at mainstream areas of mathematical research and often involve extensive computer experimentation and computation. An important message of our program is the the power of examples to illuminate, and possibly overcome, current impassesin purely theoretical attacks.The groups will meet separately several times a day but ample opportunity will be provided for students in different groups to exchange ideas. Students plan, organize, and speak in their own seminar series, attend and speak in the program's weekly seminars, and attend and speak at local and national meetings.In this small group setting, students learn deep concepts in a very concrete way and this intense exposure helps them in graduate school in two ways. First, students are better prepared in their first years of graduate school simply because they have already mastered these concepts. Second, and more importantly, the REUexperience teaches students how to take a new concept and flesh it out, using examples and questions until they gain the essential intuition for it.Finally, each student in our program writes up a preprint of his or her work and these preprints are available on our web site. Publications and honors theses often result from the summer's work.