In a recent post, @jericson was interested in finding out about REU programs available. It springs to mind the possibility of creating REU directly on this website drawing on the fantastic pool of mathematicians in our community.
A rough sketch of the program we could offer would be along the following lines:
- create a core group of REU coordinators, maybe restrict those positions to those who hold a MSc or higher,
- develop a list of REU topics to promote the projects,
- the undergrads taking the project would get a team of mentors and post their work and questions on the website where the entire community could provide them with insights and appropriate help.
Notes:
- the mentors could agree to submit a detailed reference letter at the end of the project to describe the outcome and give some credit to the participants,
- this is also a great opportunity to offer collaborative and/or multi-disciplinary projects, that would be a nice change from the boring tradition of the lonesome mathematician still cultivated in so many universities.
Next step actions:
- if the community agrees with this idea, we'll need to add some explanations in the faq to direct potentially interested participants,
- agree on the characteristics a REU should have (amount of work, level of difficulty, etc.)
- if you are interested in becoming a mentor and/or have some topic suggestions that could fit a REU write them down somewhere, I'll create a dedicated question in the meta if the project catches on,
- it seems we wouldn't need to create anything specific for this project, just add a system of explicit tags (each project could get such a tag for example).
The goal is of course to create something as a community, I'm more than willing to give some time to this project, but I won't do it alone. Waiting for your comments/answers/suggestions and participation!