Between the 4^th and the 6^th of November, an AMS-MER-SIAM workshop on "Professional Master’s Degrees in Mathematics: Exploring Options in Graduate Education" was held at Arizona State University.

As suggested in the workshop title, the idea of the workshop was to discuss and explore the options of introducing master degrees in mathematics which does not put it’s focus in the traditional pure areas of mathematics. Instead, the "new" master’s degrees would have a more industry related focus. For instance industrial mathematics, finance mathematics, or information science for industry were a few of the many directions taken at universities across the nation.

Each day of the workshop started with a morning program where all participants gathered for discussions concerning implementation and successful operation of this "new" kind of master’s programs in mathematics. The afternoon program consisted of "break-out sessions" where different schools shared their ideas, successes, and failures from their work in implementing such a new type of master’s program for mathematics.

One such break-out session on Saturday November 6, was "Mathematics and Information Science for Industry" at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The presenter was one of the founders of this program, Dr. Paul Brown (who currently holds a post doctorate position at UIC). From their own abstract, the goals with the new program is to provide:

• An interdisciplinary curriculum balancing discrete mathematics, continuos mathematics, computer science and statistics.
• The opportunity for students to work in teams on advanced research and development projects.
• Workshops and projects to give students the opportunity to work in a team and to improve their technical oral and written communication skills.

Dr. Brown explained that one of the keys to success for a new program is to have a special "niche." After a survey of knowledge possessed by interested faculty at UIC, it was determined that University of Illinois at Chicago’s niche for the new master’s degree in mathematics was information science. (No survey of what skills the industry is looking for was performed upon deciding the content of the new program). The not-yet-fully-implemented master’s program in mathematics and information science for industry now offers a variety of existing math courses at UIC plus an externally funded "capstone course", a one semester project which, on top of solving a problem, also promotes teamwork and presentation skills.

Dr. brown continued by explaining some of the problems UIC’s mathematics department had encountered so far was:

• The program was not attracting returning students from the industry into the program.
• The program struggles with getting enough funding for the capstone course.
• Some of the students display an unwillingness to meet outside of class to work on the project in the capstone course.

One further problem was the international students. After not getting a clear answer from Dr. Brown upon inquiring about why the international students would present a problem, I merely believe that it was from an unwillingness to try to find a solution to what was presented as a "close to unsolvable" problem (visa issues and oral communication skills).

Despite these problems, the students graduating with an MISI degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago have not had any trouble in finding a job after graduation.