REU Site: Willamette Mathematics Consortium Research Experiences for Undergraduates

威拉米特数学联盟REU是一个为期八周的密集暑期研究项目，让本科生沉浸在具有挑战性的、变革性的、真实的研究体验中。每年夏天，三个研究团队从事三个不同但同时进行的研究项目，这些项目共享一个共同的统一主题。每个研究团队由三名本科生和一名教师导师组成。研究团队的生活和工作都很接近。这种接近，再加上几次有组织的社交活动，给了参与者充分的合作机会，并在更大的研究社区内建立新的持久的联系。方案活动包括创建新的数学、职业发展讲习班和培训，以及在区域和国家会议上发表演讲。这些活动旨在增加参与者对数学内容和过程的了解，加强他们的技术沟通技能，并提高他们对数学和其他STEM领域职业的认识和准备。学生申请者在全国范围内招募，有针对性地招募代表人数不足的群体和研究机会有限的学校的学生。每年夏天的研究都围绕着一个广泛的数学领域进行：第一个夏天是环论和矩阵理论，第二个夏天是统计和随机过程，第三个夏天是图论和组合学。计划的具体项目包括：代数投票理论、预测完全交叉口的分解、2015年夏季的单环拟阵、马尔可夫链的混合时间、拓扑和统计数据分析、2016年夏季的修正Ehrenfest链、几何交叉图、可视化dessins d‘fants以及2017年夏季的竞技图着色。这些项目是从教师导师正在进行的研究计划和专业知识中挑选出来的。导师在这些领域拥有领先的本科生研究的良好记录，总共指导了142名本科生的研究项目，导致本科生参与者进行了73次外部研究报告，10篇出版物和13篇正在进行的论文，所有这些都是与学生共同撰写的。

The Willamette Mathematics Consortium REU is an intensive eight-week summer research program which immerses undergraduate students in a challenging, transformative, authentic research experience. Each summer, three research teams engage in three different but simultaneous research projects which share a common unifying theme. Each research team consists of three undergraduates and one faculty mentor. Research teams live and work in close proximity. This proximity, combined with several organized social outings, give participants ample opportunities to collaborate and establish new and lasting bonds within the greater research community. Program activities include the creation of new mathematics, career development workshops and training, and presentations at regional and national conferences. These activities are designed to increase participants' knowledge of mathematical content and process, strengthen their technical communication skills, and increase their awareness of and preparation for careers in mathematics and other STEM fields. Student applicants are recruited nationwide, with targeted recruitment of underrepresented groups and students from schools with limited research opportunities.Research each summer is organized around a broad mathematical field: ring and matrix theory in the first summer, statistics and random processes in the second, and graph theory and combinatorics in the third. Specific projects planned are algebraic voting theory, predicting decompositions for complete intersections, and unipancyclic matroids for the summer of 2015, mixing times of Markov chains, topological and statistical data analysis, and the modified Ehrenfest chain for the summer of 2016, and geometric intersection graphs, visualizing dessins d'enfants, and competitive graph coloring for the summer of 2017. These projects are chosen from the faculty mentors' ongoing research programs and expertise. Mentors have a proven track record of leading undergraduate research in these areas, having collectively guided 142 undergraduate students on research projects resulting in 73 external research presentations by undergraduate participants, 10 publications, and 13 papers in progress, all with student co-authors.