Mentorships

Each summer the Mathematics Department sponsors three programs, RSI, SPUR/SPUR+, and UROP+, in which graduate students supervise high school and undergraduate students carrying out mathematical research. Faculty advisors are Professor David Jerison and Professor Ankur Moitra. André Dixon is program coordinator. A solicitation will be circulated to all MIT graduate students at the beginning of the Spring term.

Eligibility: Most regular graduate students, including those who graduate this May, are eligible to serve as mentors. Warning: non-US students who graduate in May must apply several months in advance for a work visa for the summer (usually OPT).

Compensation: ^[1]

Job Description

In both RSI and SPUR, mentors meet with their students (typically two per mentor) one hour each weekday. In the first week, students are assigned original individual or joint research projects, depending on their preferences and availability. The students work on these problems full time. Coming up with a good problem or area of study is the hardest part. Mentors should consult faculty (especially their thesis advisors) for help choosing a problem.

At the end of both programs there are presentations. The high-school students give 10-15 minute power point presentations during the last two days of the program and often develop their projects further for the Intel or Siemens competition. The SPUR students prepare a short (ten-page) paper on their work and give a 20-minute oral presentation on the last day of the program. We also run a weekly seminar in SPUR, with talks by faculty members.

SPUR+ is an augmented SPUR program originally designed to increase diversity. It is aimed at students showing great promise in mathematics, but who have been underserved in mathematical education. Students in the SPUR+ program meet with their mentor three times a week for 1.5 hours during the guided reading period in preparation for research, before the actual 6-week SPUR program.

In UROP+, mentors meet with their students (typically two per mentor) for 1 hour twice a week. The mentors create the projects in consultation with their advisors. The projects can have a large educational component (i.e., directed reading), but should also have a research component. By the end of August, the UROP+ students prepare a paper, at least 10 single-spaced pages long, which can be to a large extent expository.

Program Descriptions

RSI is the Research Science Institute, a national program run by a nonprofit organization CEE (Center for Excellence in Education). RSI recently received major funding from Akamai.

Each summer CEE selects 75 outstanding high school students from many countries to do research in science and engineering at MIT. About a dozen participants are selected to do projects in mathematics. CEE supervises the students while they live in MIT dormitories and arranges all kinds of social activities and general science lectures for them.

RSI students regularly win prizes at national science competitions, such as Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS), Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology, and Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF). See a list of recent award winners.

SPUR is the MIT Mathematics Department's Summer Program in Undergraduate Research. Up to ten MIT undergraduates participate. A number of projects have led to published papers, many of them joint with the graduate student mentor. SPUR mentors and students attend a weekly seminar of lectures by MIT faculty members.

UROP+ (Supervised Undergraduate Research Opportunity) is the MIT Mathematics Department's summer program, which matches MIT undergraduates with graduate student mentors, who supervise UROP projects. Up to eleven MIT undergraduates participate. A final paper can be submitted to arXiv.org and a journal if it contains original results.

[1] Compensation may be adjusted for students with other summer funding sources.