Keeley Naughton, Class of 2013:
Each summer the NSF (National Science Foundation) funds Research Experience for Undergraduate Programs at Universities all over the U.S. This past summer, I participated in an REU at Texas State University. These programs typically give you a stipend as well as covering your room and board expenses for the summer. The program I participated in focused on prime graphs, discussing both the group theoretic and graph theoretic properties. The experience was very much student driven. Our faculty advisor provided us with basic information and papers on prime graphs. He also spent the first two to three weeks, lecturing on group theory, so that we would all have the same background knowledge. After providing us with the information he knew, he let us decide our own course of research within the topic. During the course of the summer, not only did I get to experience what a mathematical research career would be like, I was also exposed to almost the entire semester’s worth of group theory taught in MAT 631 at SU. It was a valuable learning experience, and a fun way to spend the summer. Each day, I met with three other students in my group and our advisor, and we would read papers and work together to figure out new properties of prime graphs. Other programs have very specific questions, while the one I was involved in had a very broad topic. We met with the other two research groups weekly, to present what we had been working on, and prepared a final paper. We are currently in the process of submitting our paper for publication. I would definitely recommend participating in an REU for any sophomore or junior interested in going to graduate school.
Gordon Jones, Class of 2013:
I spent this past summer participating in an REU at Bard College in Red Hook, NY. I had never done one before, so I did not know what to expect, but it turned out to be a very productive and relaxing 8 weeks. The college placed all of the REU students in an on campus freshman dorm, so we all lived in pretty close proximity all summer. We all worked in groups of 2 or 3 on a specific research project that was chosen by our faculty advisor. Each day we would work from around 10am to 6pm with a short lunch break around 12. Each Wednesday, all of the REU students would come together for a tea break that was almost always followed by a brief lecture by either one of Bard's professors or a guest speaker. Each group was expected to give 3 presentations during the REU. The first one being about 3 weeks in, the second one about 6 weeks in, and the final one on the last day. Also, each group was expected to summarize their research in a final paper. Thus, each work day was either spent working on finding new results within our research topic, reading literature to better understand our research topic, typing our results into LaTeX in order to put together our paper, or preparing presentations. It really gave me a good idea of what graduate study in Mathematics would be like, and helped me figure out if that was something that I would like to pursue after leaving Syracuse University. We had every weekend off, and were free to travel about as we pleased. The students in the REU did a lot of things together, and we all developed a pretty friendly relationship with one another. It was a very enlightening and helpful experience, and if you are considering graduate study in Mathematics I strongly suggest trying to be involved in one.
