VIGRE at the University of Arizona

The program is jointly run by the Department of Mathematics and the Program in Applied Mathematics. The two programs cooperate in awarding VIGRE graduate student support. A joint committee looks at applications and awards stipends with no preconceived quotas.

Basic Program Elements:

Graduate Training: Research Tutorial Groups (RTGs), affiliation with research seminars, internships, competitive proposal writing.

Undergraduate Training: Undergraduate research assistantships, undergraduate teaching assistantships, internship opportunities.

Postdoctoral Training: Involvement in RTGs, cross-disciplinary bridging, mentoring role in graduate and undergraduate research activities

Outreach Activities: Native American Summer Science Institute, high School workshops, visits to AP calculus classes.

Noteworthy features:

Research Tutorial Groups: Students attend lectures on three different topics in the fall, choose one for a research project in the spring. The aim is to help students make the transition from “consumer” (of course work) to “producer” (of research). The RTGs engage first year students in some (modest) research activity in a tutorial group setting.

They are an ideal vehicle for vertical integration— they can involve postdocs and advanced graduate students, and can lead to more advanced research.

Competitive proposal writing: Students must submit competitive proposals for continuing VIGRE funding. Proposals are expected to lay out clear plans for course work, research, and vertical integration activities. This leads to natural mentoring: a faculty committee reviews the first draft and then meets and discusses proposals with students and makes suggestions for improvements. Students then resubmit a revised proposal for final consideration. Not all proposals are funded!

Cross disciplinary bridging: The Program in Applied Mathematics connects students with faculty across an array of disciplines, drawn from 15 departments in the Colleges of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Despite the Program's executive independence it maintains a unique working relationship with the Mathematics Department, many of whose faculty are among its most active members; roughly half of the PhDs awarded by the Program in the past five years were supervised by faculty from the Department of Mathematics.