Actions For Renewing U S Mathematical Sciences Departments

As requested by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Interagency Committee for Extramural Mathematics Programs (ICEMAP), this report updates the 1984 Report known as the "David Report." Specifically, the charge directed the committee to (1) update that report, describing the infrastructure and support for U.S. mathematical sciences research; (2) assess trends and progress over the intervening five years against the recommendations of the 1984 Report; (3) briefly assess the field scientifically and identify significant opportunities for research, including cross-disciplinary collaboration; and (4) make appropriate recommendations designed to ensure that U.S. mathematical sciences research will meet national needs in coming years. Of the several components of the mathematical sciences community requiring action, its wellspring--university research departments--is the primary focus of this report. The progress and promise of research--described in the 1984 Report relative to theoretical development, new applications, and the refining and deepening of old applications--have if anything increased since 1984, making mathematics research ever more valuable to other sciences and technology. Although some progress has been made since 1984 in the support for mathematical sciences research, the goals set in the 1984 Report have not been achieved. Practically all of the increase in funding has gone into building the infractructure, which had deteriorated badly by 1984. While graduate and postdoctoral research, computer facilities, and new institutes have benefited from increased resources, some of these areas are still undersupported by the standards of other sciences. And in the area of research support for individual investigators, almost no progress has been made. A critical storage of qualified mathematical sciences researchers still looms, held at bay for the moment by a large influx of foreign researchers, an uncertain solution in the longer term. While government has responded substantially to the 1984 Report's recommendations, particularly in the support of infrastructure, the universities generally have not, so that the academic foundations of the mathematical sciences research enterprise are as shaky now as in 1984. The greatet progress has been made in the mathematics sciences community, whose members have shown a growing awareness of the problems confronting their discipline and increased interest in dealing with the problems, particularly in regard to communication with the public and government agencies and involvement in education. (AA)

The goal of this book is to determine what makes certain doctoral/postdoctoral programs in mathematical sciences successful in producing large numbers of domestic Ph.D.s, including women and underrepresented minorities with sufficient professional experience and versatility to meet the research, teaching, and industrial needs of our technology-based society. Educating Mathematical Scientists describes the characteristics of successful doctoral/postdoctoral programs, based on the diverse set of 10 universities at which site visits were made.

The research university is one of the most characteristic and important institutions of our time. It is an extremely complex entity, seeking to achieve a variety of aims and responding to a multiplicity of pressures. Its principal obligation is to educate students and to prepare them to live in and contribute to society. To serve this function, knowledge must be collected, organized, and disseminated, but perhaps even more important, new knowledge must be created. The knowledge so developed and imparted must ultimately be carried out into society, largely through former students but also by other means. The present volume is a collection of 30 essays on the character, administration, and management of research universities, with special emphasis on the perspective of statistics and operations research. It thus concentrates on issues of systematic planning, planning models, teaching approaches, and management associated with the aims and methods of operations research, although it also deals with more general concerns about the management of universities and university resources, and with some of the applications of operations-research and statistical tools that have moved outside university settings.

This set of two volumes offers statements from disciplinary/professional societies on what faculty work deserves recognition and reward in their unique culture/community. Volume I covers religion, history, geography, math, chemistry, the arts, business, journalism, and family/consumer science, plus the National Education Association.

Over the next decade, the mathematical community and the nation's colleges and unversities must restructure fundamentally the culture, content, and context of undergraduate mathematics. Acknowledging the weaknesses in the present college mathematics curriculum and the ways in which it is taught, this book cites exemplary programs that point the way toward achieving the same world-wide preeminence for mathematics education that the United States enjoys in mathematical research. Moving Beyond Myths sets forth ambitious goals for collegiate mathematics by the year 2000 and provides a sweeping plan of action to accomplish them. It calls on mathematics faculty, their departments, their professional societies, colleges and universities, and government agencies to do their parts to implement the plan, help the public move beyond commonly held myths about mathematics, and bring about a revitalization of undergraduate mathematics.