Brainstorming and Barnstorming: An REU site at KSU

“头脑风暴和巡回演讲”是由美国国家科学基金会资助的一项针对堪萨斯州立大学本科生的研究体验项目，该项目将从2005年夏天开始连续运行三年。该项目每年将招收10名本科生，并聘用14名教师，为期8周。这个REU的主要目标是：1)招募新的数学人才；2)帮助这些学生从花几分钟解决的问题过渡到花几年解决的问题；3)让这些学生接触到他们在学习中通常不会遇到的各种数学概念。该计划的学术部分将利用三个独立的组成部分来实现这些目标。每个组成部分都是对堪萨斯州立大学数学系已经取得成功的一个项目的改编。第一项活动将以KSU问题研讨会和问题解决小组为蓝本。在问题研讨会上，教师向学生展示解决问题的技巧。在解决问题的小组中，学生合作解决可能需要新技术的具有挑战性的问题。第二项活动将向参加者介绍应用数学中的一个问题。每年这个问题都是来自航空业的问题的简化。这个问题的范围与数学建模竞赛中的问题相似。在对应用问题进行初步介绍之后，学生将被分成三组，每组将被要求提出问题的解决方案。经过一周的学习，小组将重新聚在一起，对各种方法进行比较和综合。教师将提出改进建议，参与者将对接下来几周的研究计划达成一致。第三项活动将是一个纯粹数学的概念和开放研究问题研讨会。会有定期的“课后数学”社会活动。这些活动的亮点将是为感兴趣的学生提供飞行训练。

``Brainstorming and barnstorming,'' is an NSF funded research experience for undergraduates site at Kansas State University that will run for three consecutive years starting in the Summer of 2005. Each year the program will accept 10 undergraduates and employ fourteen faculty for an eight-week program. The primary objectives of this REU will be: 1)recruit new talent into mathematics 2) help these students make the transition from problems that take minutes to solve to problems that take years to solve; 3) expose these students to a variety of mathematical ideas that they might not ordinarily encounter in their studies. The academic portion of the program will utilize three separate components to achieve these objectives. Each component is an adaptation of a program that has already been a success in the Kansas State University mathematics department. The first activity will be modeled on the KSU problem seminar and problem-solving group. In the problem seminar, faculty members show students problem-solving techniques. In the problem-solving group students collaborate on challanging problems that may require the new techniques. The second activity will introduce the participants to a problem from applied mathematics. Each year this problem will be a simplification of a problem coming from the aviation industry. The problem will be similar in scope to the problems in theMathematical Contest in Modeling. After an initial introduction to the applied problem, the students will be split into three groups and each group will be asked to develop a solution to the problem. After one week of progress, the groups will be brought back together and the various approaches will be compared and synthesized. The faculty will suggest improvements and the participants will agree on a plan of research for the remaining weeks. The third activity will be a notions and open research problems seminar in pure mathematics. There will be regular ``after math'' social activities. The highlight of these activities will be flight training for interested students.