Make the undergraduate research process complete. Send math and statistics majors to present their findings at national professional conferences.

Math and statistics majors are investigating some exciting theories with real-world applications—the long-term viability of Monarch butterfly migration, efficient walking and gait patterns, accurate computational approximation methods, 3D printing, Sudoku, knot theory, NBA playoff predictions, and more.

“But the research experience is not complete until there is a public demonstration of the work,” says department head David Carothers. “Some publish, some present, but peer review is essential.”

Your gift to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics will send undergraduate researchers to national research conferences to present their findings. “That experience teaches students to talk rationally and express their ideas to others who do not have the same expertise,” Carothers says.

Peer review caps an intensive undergraduate experience in math. Your gift to the department helps provide undergraduate researchers with faculty guidance and the freedom to explore and push the discipline.

“The classroom teaches what’s been done before and how the field developed,” Carothers says. “Independent research allows students to work with ideas that come from their own minds. They must be creative and undertake projects where the outcome is not clear.”

Your gift will ensure that the undergraduate research experience in math and statistics continues in top form and will enable many more students to participate. Please give and help to:

• ensure that students receive one-on-one time with expert and engaged professors
• ensure that students have hands-on research opportunities
• send undergraduates to present their findings at national research conferences
• offer undergraduate research stipends for the summer
• ensure that students have access to sophisticated instrumentation that students at most universities don't get to use until graduate school
• maintain and replace sophisticated computational equipment and instrumentation
• bring in speakers and encourage student and alumni networking
• build out curriculum and programs
• purchase small specialty equipment
• pay for emergency repairs for lab equipment
• send faculty mentors to conferences along with undergraduates
• offer faculty research stipends for the summer

Together, by combining our vision and talents in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, we can ensure that Madison students get the intense research experiences that qualify them ahead of the curve to enter graduate school, research labs, the teaching profession, the workforce or anywhere else they seek to go to boost America's culture of innovation and discovery and solve the real-world problems that face society.

That’s how the national model of the Engaged University operates. Your gift makes it possible.