Doctoral Mentors

$Mentors at the 2018 Field of Dreams conference.$

Building on the success of the predoctoral mentoring and on the success of the Math Alliance Postdoctoral Program, the Math Alliance is building a graduate program. Experience has shown that the success of American doctoral students in STEM fields, and especially those students from underrepresented backgrounds, depends in an essential way on the climate and culture of the departments they attend. This fact has led organizations such as GEM and Sloan to design their fellowship programs around departments and individual faculty who have demonstrated that they have the knowledge and experience to build programs in which such students thrive. We have modeled our Math Alliance graduate program on these organizations and, have designated both individual and group Math Alliance faculty membership.

Math Alliance Doctoral Mentors are quantitative science graduate faculty members who are interested in mentoring underrepresented doctoral students. They have made a commitment to mentor doctoral students from underrepresented backgrounds and to work with other faculty in their department as well as with other Math Alliance Graduate Faculty nationally to increase the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds who will receive a doctoral degree in the quantitative sciences. Such faculty will be expected to participate in Math Alliance activities such as mentoring, developing collaborations with REU programs and attending the annual Field of Dreams Conference. They also work within their department to build or maintain a Math Alliance Graduate Program Group.

It is a reality that not all doctoral granting departments in the quantitative sciences may wish to form a GPG. There may be faculty in these departments who have had experience mentoring underrepresented students or who are eager to do so. Such faculty are welcome to join the Math Alliance as Math Alliance Graduate Faculty. As such they may nominate Math Alliance Doctoral Scholars as well as benefit from Math Alliance programs aimed at faculty. They will also form the core of efforts to build new GPG’s. For further information on joining the Math Alliance Graduate Faculty, please contact the Alliance Director, David Goldberg (goldberg@purdue.edu).