University of Rochester Newsletter

The University of Rochester Computer Science department publishes a newsletter called "Multicast" (this is a computer science term).  Sometimes these newsletters are interesting to read to see what kinds of things are going on in other academic institutions.

Notre Dame ESTEEM program

Last year Notre Dame introduced this interesting new program for science and math students.  It seems that it is doing OK, because they just sent me an email advertising it again.  It's quite a fascinating idea: take the "technical" students and put them through a program that is intended to get them to become entrepreneurs.  If that sounds like fun, I'd encourage you to look into it some more.

SMU Graduate Program in Computational and Applied Mathematics

We have had several students accepted into SMU's Ph.D. program.  They seem to really like our math majors!  If you're interested in applied mathematics, this is a great program.  You can get more information at their department's website: http://www.smu.edu/math.

Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs

From the flyer they sent me: "Ford Foundation Fellowships are designed to increase the diversity of the nation's college and university faculties."  They give out fellowships for graduate studies that would lead to a teaching and research career at the college or university level.  You can find more information at http://national-academies.org/fellowships.

Student Membership in Professional Societies

Professional societies exist to help push a particular field or discipline forward, through advocacy, communication & publications, and putting on professional meetings.  For students, they are often a good way to see what's "going on" in a particular profession --- what are the members in the field thinking about, working on, etc.  This is especially true because they are usually have student membership rates that are quite reasonable.

I recently received notices about these student memberships from two societies: the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the IEEE/IEEE Computer Society.  You can read about their student membership opportunities at http://www.siam.org and http://www.computer.org. Just look for a link to "membership" or "join now" to see what the student memberships cost and what kind of benefits you'd receive.

Don't forget about the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), American Statistical Association (ASA), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), all of which have student membership rates.