Joint Meetings in New Orleans
by Brian Bird, Shelly Smith, and Jimmy Mopecha

• You learn a lot about the subject matter itself. Whatever your interest, someone will be talking about it.

• You learn a lot about which direction the subject matter is heading. For example, in statistics education, there is a huge push for students to work with real data and there is a huge push to start establishing minor in statistics programs.

• You learn a lot about which technology is hot. For example, in statistics education, a lot of people are starting to use a program called Fathom. The developer of Fathom was there and was giving out free demo copies.

• You make connections. Even if you don’t meet the people, they give you their e-mail address and would love to hear from you. I plan on e-mailing several of them and saying, "I heard your talk at the Joint Meetings and was wondering if you could help me …"

• You feel like part of a community – the mathematical community. As a graduate student, I don’t think I lot of us feel this sense of belonging It increases your desire to contribute to the mathematical community.

• Plan early. A lot of people go to the conferences so book your flight and hotel as soon as possible.

• Try to stay as close as possible to where the conference is taking place. This alleviates the need for a rental car. In New Orleans, the taxi ride to and from the airport was only $10 each way. A rental car cost about $50 per day. Parking at the hotel cost $27 per night!

• The conference was HUGE and so was the schedule of events. Make a written itinerary (Plan A) of what you want to do and a backup itinerary (Plan B). Some sessions are better than others. If you don’t think a session will be valuable, switch to Plan B. Writing the itinerary actually took me a couple of hours to do but was worth it.

• Pick and choose the right conference. Consider subject matter, weather, location, friends/relatives in the area, etc.

• Go with someone you enjoy being around. You get enough math during the day – you need to do some non-math stuff during the evenings. My wife (a non-mathematician) came with me and we had a blast! I met her for lunch every afternoon and we went out on the town every night. She made a vacation out of it – sleeping in, shopping, sightseeing, etc.

• Try to hear the BIG names in your field. I really enjoyed the talks given by the gurus.

By Shelly Smith

The hotel lobbies were a whirlwind of activity, with people hurrying in and out of meetings, looking for the next conference room on their itinerary. The conference was a little overwhelming because there were so many things going on at the same time, and no matter what you chose to do, there were always things that you were missing out on. I circled the meetings that I wanted to see in the complete schedule, and was able to make it to most of them, but of course there were many things that I simply didn't have time to see.

The evening talks that were intended for general audiences were very good and reasonably accessible, regardless of the specialty of the listener. Even though it was so impressive to see talks given by well-known mathematicians, I was most encouraged when I saw other graduate students giving presentations. They were well organized and seemed very confident speaking in front of other mathematicians. I haven't given any talks outside of my graduate classes, and this gives me the push that I need to start working toward to doing something like this myself. The poster sessions seem to be a good place to start, whether here or at any other conference in my field. The poster sessions were very relaxed and informal, and gave me a chance to talk with grad students about their research, and I was able to asked detailed questions that there simply wasn't enough time for in the regular sessions.

One unexpected thing that I learned was the importance of the employment center. I had read about it in the conference information, but didn't pay much attention because I am a couple of years away from my job search. Now I realize what a great resource it is for meeting with representatives from universities and giving them a face to put with my application. The interviews may be very short and hurried, but it gives both interviewer and interviewee a quick way to weed out poor matches and to identify potentially good ones. I will definitely plan far in advance to make sure I'm prepared to participate in the interviews my last year in grad school.

The location, of course, was great. Most of my tourism was restricted to long lunches, however, and I could have easily spent a couple more days there before I was ready to leave. This really made up for the inconvenience of having to live out of a suitcase during the conference, and for future conferences I may try to schedule an extra day or two so I can enjoy some guilt-free sightseeing without missing any meetings.

By Jimmy Mopecha

This was my first time of attending a conference of any kind. My personal evaluation of my participation is a very positive one.

While at the conference I met with my advisor who was happy to see me. He introduced me to some great personalities such as the Director for the Institute for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology and NAM (National Association of Mathematicians). He gave me information about the NAM session and advised me to attend. I attended and learnt that NAM was much about helping recent Ph.D.s from minority groups to give talks at conferences.

Attending the conference only for the first day, I recommended to my advisor and some other faculty from ASU that I also met at the conference that it will be a good thing if the Professors could help their graduate students financially to attend conferences as early as their first year into their graduate programs. If I had attended a conference of this type earlier into my program, it would have certainly influenced the choice of courses for my program of study.

I met some students from other Universities who were already attending a conference not only for the third time but were also giving a talk, although still doing the masters degrees. It was certainly not a very interesting scenario for a fifth year doctoral student to be attending a conference for the first time, and meeting a second year masters student who is attending for the third time and also giving a talk.

I attended the PFF( Professor For the Future) session i.e. our PFF, during which I listened to PFF participants from the following Universities:

1. Cornell University

In Cornell the PFMF is independent of PFF. Some of its activities include the following:

- encourage participants to attend regional conferences of the MAA, give talks and create contacts during such conferences.

- organize discussions between participants and potential employers, during which the employers tell the participants about the requirements for employment.

-give participants small financial incentives to prepare talks on fun topics and present to students at regional Liberal Arts Colleges.

2. Rutgers University.

The program at Rutgers is very similar to our PFMF except for the following that I noticed. Post-doctoral student are made to work with graduate students on undergraduate theorems and give talks on their full and detailled proofs.

3. Virginia Institute of Technology.

Here too, the program is very similar to our ASU PFMF except that I noticed that graduate student readiness to teach was based on students evaluations during TA training.

4. The University of Washington had nothing new.

5. The University of Binghamton.

- Graduate students were trained on how to advise undergraduate students.

-Graduate students make frequent visits to neighboring colleges and help in recruiting students from these colleges.

-Graduates students work with senior undergraduate students on papers and give talks on them during seminars such as Algebra seminars.

- Speakers were invited from the technology industry to come and give talks to graduate students on the use of particular technology in Mathematics.

After listening to all other PFFers from other Universities, I can say that ours is one of the best. Most of what they do, we do. The grant writing workshops, CV and Cover Letter writing training were almost done only in our PFMF. Thanks to our PFMF I was able to attend my first ever conference.

To conclude, I want to thank our PIs, Professors Dieter Armbruster and Mathias Kawski for the good work they have been doing for this program and to us.