department spring meeting, 4.25.24

topics
  • admission
  • fellowships, summer support
  • what did I do?
admission

Number of applications didn’t go down, but rather increased, to 571 (Math PhD).

Graduate Admission Committee did great job; special thanks to Aimo!

During the hot phase (early February – April 15), a lot of interactions with the faculty members: thank you!

Open House went well: propose to keep it virtual in the future.

Masters: 17 altogether (quite a few of them will help in the classrooms as TA).

PhDs program. Overshot in terms of acceptances: 18 fresh students; 3 MSc->PhD converts. Strong cohort, 14 international, 7 domestic. 5 women.

summer funding

Thanks to new funding (especially, Philippe Tondeur’s contribution, – thank you!), have really good prospects for student’s summer support.

But, make sure they use it properly: need your supervision.

report

what did I do over the past three years:

  • shrank the PhD students program to about 120 students.
  • introduced the graduate students’ advocates program. Seems to work!
  • reformatted math499 course, – turned it into teaching module (thank you, April!) + ethics in math module (need a module on mathematical writing).
  • introduction of teaching credits for graduate advising. (Larger scale reform of the 5xx courses is needed…)
  • some streamlining of the comp system.