An exciting DRP topic is something that is not covered in a typical undergraduate class. This topic should be chosen by the student with guidance from the mentor. Students may have a broad idea of what they are interested in, and mentors can help narrow things down to what might be feasible to learn in a quarter. 

The possible range of projects is completely open and depends on the mutual interests and backgrounds of the mentor and mentee. It is encouraged that a student is taking or has already taken MATH 100. Other than topics from pure mathematics, there is also the possibility of applied mathematics, statistics, mathematics education or history of mathematics projects.

Please take a look at Past Topics as a source of inspiration.   

Mentors are expected to meet with their students once per week for about an hour and are required to attend the end-of-quarter DRP Colloquium.

It’s important to inform the DRP organizers as soon as possible about any issues that may arise. These issues might include a student repeatedly not preparing for meetings or deciding to leave the program. If a student misses two meetings in a row without forewarning, please email the DRP organizers. The organizers will attempt to mediate.

Mentors are encouraged to introduce and help their students practice LaTeX. This includes introducing them to Beamer (Poster), which will be useful for their presentation in the DRP Colloquium. 

At the end of the quarter, each student present a poster about something they learned. In service of the audience, it’s best to use a single topic to highlight and illustrate (literally or figuratively). 

One of the goals of DRP is for students to practice communicating mathematics, so the poster presentations are just as important as the math they learn. Students are encouraged to practice presenting their posters to their mentors. 

Mentors are encouraged to help their students build their posters, especially by introducing them to LaTeX and Beamer Poster. There will be a mid-quarter social event that includes a short workshop on Beamer Poster to help both the students and their mentors get started. A template can be found here. 

The poster presentation will be held during the last week of classes. We have the funding to print out students' posters.

We recommend the undergraduate students to be as honest as possible on what they know and don't know. This will only help the student. It is natural to be confused and not understand something quickly; math is hard!  A good exercise for the pair will be to work out examples together, it's the most efficient way to gauge understanding of the material and also the most efficient way to understand the material itself.

We recommend that the graduate mentors talk to their student about the tension between abstract intuition and concrete skills in math. Having a level of comfort with abstract things is important so that one is not always bogged down in the details — math is often about seeing the big picture. However, if all one sees is the big picture, one likely does not really understand what’s going on and how things work. That’s why one must get one's hands dirty by working out specific examples and details.