The panel was made up of Frank Swenton, Middlebury College; Maria Robinson, Seattle University; Reva Kasman, Grand Valley State University; Amy Ksir, U.S. Naval Academy; and Mike Latina, Community College of Rhode Island.

Will Dickerson introduced the panel and asked them to talk a bit about their transition from graduate school to their first job, in particular how they got there and what the expectations/criteria they used.

Mike Latina (Community College)

Mike has been a Professor of Mathematics for 34 years. He got his bachelors degree from WPI and his masters from Brown (and clawed his way to a PhD from Brown). At a community college the main thrust is defiantly teaching, there is really no funding for research.

The three main functions of The Community College of Rhode Island are:

1. Two year tech programs (e.g. nursing)
2. Transfer credits
3. Community service courses (evening courses)

There are approximately 300 full time and about 600 part time lectures.

You need to be aware that the workload is 100% teaching. There are 15 contact hours/wk; 6 office hours; 14 weeks per semester.

Compensation is typically low (typically even lower than public school teachers) but there are opportunities to teaching nights and summers for extra pay. The median age of students is 28 years and it is a "commuter" college so there is not alot of the "collegiate" atmosphere. About half of math courses offered are developmental or remedial (e.g. arithmetic, elementary algebra).

The minimum requirement to teach in a community college is typically a masters degree (most commonly in Education). In Mike's department only four of 20 of the faculty have their PhD. Also, there is also not a lot of faculty development. But there is a new program called Project Access (see http://www.maa.org/projectacccess/welcome.html) that is similar to Project NExT and is aimed at this.

Maria Robinson (Teaching Postdoc)

Maria got her PhD from Emory University in 2000. She applied to lots of types of positions. She ended up doing a teaching post doc at Arizona. This program takes about four people per year (for a total of about 12 people) who are interested more in teaching than in research. It is a great community, kind of like a mini Project NExT. The teaching load is about three courses per semester which, if you so desire, you can use to get experience teaching many different types of courses.

Maria showed a slide with information on similar types of post doc programs:

Programs Emphasizing Teaching

• University of Arizona
  • Teaching Post Doctoral Fellowship
  • Contact: Elias Toubassi <elias@math.arizona.edu>
  • Web page: http://math.arizona.edu/~postdoc/
• University of Minnesota
  • Institute of Technology, Center for Educational Programs (ITCEP)
  • Contact: Harvey Keynes <itcep@umn.edu>
  • Web page: http://www.itcep.umn.edu
• Harvard University
  • Preceptor Program at Math Department
  • Contact: Dan Goroff <goroff@math.harvard.edu>
  • Web page: http://www.math.harvard.edu/preceptor

Maria is now in a tenure track position at Seattle University.

Frank Swenton (Liberal Arts School)

Frank got his BS in 1994 and his PhD in 1999 from Princeton. He didn't really know what a liberal arts school was.

At Middlebury College there are about 1500-2000 students who range in age from 18-22 years in age.

Why does Frank feel this position is right for him? He did a lot of teaching in grad school and enjoyed it. The teaching load is around 3-2, 2-2, 3-3 but another thing to consider is the length of the semester.

Balance time spent - lots of time for students.

The amount of research expectations varies - and you need to push for research time. Some schools will offer funding for travel and conferences.

You will typically have a three year review and a pre tenure review.

As far as what Frank sees as the best and worst features of his job:

Best: He gets to teach;

Worst: Teaching takes up a fair bit of time.

Don't expect to have people in your area at your school.

The most important thing to do to get a job like this: Get lots of teaching experience, have letter writers scale down their adjective down by one when refering to your research, try to get to know the school and have this reflected in your letter somehow, and show you want to teach.

One thing to be aware of, the review of your performance will typically have a strong component of what your students think of you.

Amy Ksir (U.S. Naval Academy)

First piece of advice - keep an open mind.

Amy got her undergraduate degree from Rice and her PhD from Penn. She is now an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The U.S. Naval Academy has approximately 4000 students, all of which graduate in four years. Their course load is very engineering oriented and they take four semesters of mathematics. Class sizes are 22 students. For such a small school they have a large mathematics department (60 people). The teaching load is 2-3 courses per semester and you have to do all your own grading. The classes are very homogeneous. Research is defiantly expected and well supported. The department has a very nice environment with people "talking math" all the time. The school also has a research office to help people learn about and apply for external grants and other funding. As far as service (the "third leg" on the academic stool) young faculty are generally protected from too much of this. Amy noted that some of the "bad stuff" is that (like any government agency) there is a lot of paperwork. Also there isn't much political discussion. On the other hand, the "good stuff" is that it is a great department and Amy really enjoys the ballance of teaching and research (which she points out was the hardest thing to figure out).

Some concluding suggestions/remarks that Amy had: she recommended doing a postdoc and she also recommended practicing giving expository talks.

Reva Kasman (Regional Comprehensive University)

Reva is at Grand Valley State University, which has approximately 20,000 undergraduates and has a very liberal arts feel. The class size for math courses is 20-30 students and faculty have a teaching load of 12 credits which is approximately three courses. Service, advising and scholarship.

As an answer to "How did I come to decide this job was right for me?" Reva noted that her original plan was to teach high school math. But as an undergraduate she fell in love with pure math. She then went to graduate school and after the first three years when you get to a point where you stop taking classes and are focusing on your research and have an uncertain finish date, while some people really enjoy and thrive in this environment, she felt despair. She managed to keep "not dropping out" and found she really enjoyed teaching. When she finally finished everyone suggested doing a postdoc, citing that this would be her only chance (sort of a diode effect). But here she felt that people were really just giving general advice and not advice for her. When she looked at research she felt ill; but when she looked at teaching she felt excited. So she looked for a teaching position, but one that was not just heavily focused on teaching service cources. Grand Valley has about 35 people in the department(versus some smaller schools where there are only 4-5) and with this size it means there are teaching opportunities, e.g. there are three courses of abstract algebra offered every semester so there is more of an opportunity to teach a variety of higher level courses.

Reva also talked a bit about areas involved in tenure decisions

• Teaching : evaluated using peer evaluation, student evaluation, and portfolio.

  Reva also noted that the department allows room for various teaching styles, e.g. active learning/group work in the classroom, etc.

• Scholarship : talks, papers, K-12 workshops, active learning

• Service/Advising

The best and worst aspects of her job:

Best: Colleagues are great, mentoring students, recruiting majors

Worst: not in Chicago

If you want job similar to mine: be innovative/creative and active.

As a closing thought, Reva shared a great quote:

"There is room in the mathematical world for all different types of mathematicians"

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE

Questions from the audience to Maria: You did a teaching post doc and didn't do much research. In your current position are there research expectations?

She is doing pedagalogical research/undergrad research, but there is some tension with current dean regarding this.

Audience remark: One can do other writing/publishing other than research journals, e.g. Math Monthly may count.

Questions from the audience: How do you find out expectations (research) before you go (to the school or up for tenure)?

Once there, you will get some indication form pre tenure reviews. As far as before going to the school, some people very honest in interviews.

Also the title Earnest Boyer "Scholarship Reconsidered" with its 4 points of scholarship was mentioned.

Questions from the audience: What are peoples experience with non academic careers?

There are various options/places: NSA, "financial things", consulting firms, Bell Labs, actual careers,etc...

It's a different lifestyle. You give up a lot of freedom as far as working on what interest you. But its something to consider if you enjoy working on interesting problems and don't mind being told what problems (also, the standard of "results" may differ - a good guess/estimate may be all that is needed rather than a complete proof).

Questions from the audience: Does the age of applicant (for job canidate rather than student) matter?