Minicourses

In the Fall of 2002 the AMSC, MATH, and STAT graduate programs jointly instituted a Graduate Minicourse Series designed to introduce first-year students to some of the research and professional directions potentially available to them. Each minicourse will introduce students both to an active research area and to some of the faculty who are engaged in that research.

First-year students who want credit for attending minicourses can register once for the Minicourse series as AMSC 688 (one credit). They will then be required to attend at least four minicourses over the year. Students with certain sources of funding might soon be required to take AMSC 688, but at this stage it is certainly not a general requirement. While this series is designed for first-year students, any student may attend at any time.

As they get lined up, the minicourse schedule will be posted on the Minicourse Webpage.

While some of these minicourses will be focused on students from just one of the programs, it is expected that many will appeal to students from more than one program. We therefore hoped that 8-10 of the minicourses will be suitable for AMSC students. A minicourse is a great way for AMSC faculty members from all departments to expose AMSC students and potential AMSC students to reseach possibilities in their area.

The three hour time frame will give lecturers some latitude in the depth of material they present, and yet will not require extensive preparation. We expect most active research groups within our programs will give minicourses. People in RITs are in a perfect position to help present a related minicourse in order to entice students to join that RIT next year. A minicourse could thereby serve as an advertisement for one or more RIT's. Many minicourses will therefore be an integral part of an RIT effort, rather than an independent effort.

Minicourses will also play other roles. For one, they will provide a venue for postdoctoral fellows and advance graduate students to participate as lecturers. They will also serve to expose students to the possibility of research assistantships, internships, summer jobs, and other related professional oportunities. For example, one of the lecturers in a minicourse might be a scientist or mathematician from a regional laboratory (NIST, NASA, ...) or an advanced student who is engaged in an internship at such a laboratory.

We hope that every active reseach group affiliated with the Program will be represented by a minicourse at least once every two years. We encourage all members of the AMSC Faculty to submit a minicourse proposal.