EMSW21-MCTP: Colorado Advantage

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The MCTP: Colorado Advantage proposal will build on existing programs and efforts within the department as well as on campus (e.g. SMART program). MCTP: Colorado Advantage will continue to attract numbers of underrepresented students to the mathematical sciences by actively collaborating with the Colorado Diversity Initiative. Support from NSF-funded MCTP: Colorado Advantage will allow the department to develop and implement strategies for sustainability, such as time for re-tasking existing department resources, working with the Deans (Engineering and Arts & Sciences Deans) and Provost to gain additional resources as well as working with successful donors capable of endowing undergraduate scholarships. The 17 faculty members in the department strongly endorse this MCTP proposal. The intellectual merit of this proposal is to introduce a large number of undergraduates to the excitement of research and to stimulate their interest in furthering their mathematical education. The ability of the Department to meet this objective can be inferred from its record with its previous VIGRE grant, which began in 1999, and trained 54 undergraduates. Among the broader impacts of the MCTP: Colorado Advantage program are that it will significantly increase the number of students who take more advanced mathematics courses; the number of majors who have the transformative opportunity of working on serious longer term projects and research projects; and the number of students who graduate from the Department of Applied Mathematics and are well prepared for graduate school and the scientific workforce. Further its multiplier effect on other undergraduates at the University through the creation of a culture of undergraduate research activity will have longer-term implications for the University as a whole. An additional impact will be on graduate students and faculty who become involved in these critical mentorship activities as they pursue their own careers. Finally, the MCTP: Colorado Advantage proposal is a model that can be used at any research university that has a graduate program, faculty committed to undergraduate education and a will to transform itself.