The Spelman-Morehouse Directed Reading Program (DRP) is a math mentorship program for students at Spelman and Morehouse to work with grad students and junior researchers on semester-long reading projects in math. Meetings take place over Zoom.
The DRP aims to:
provide a casual, stress-free environment for students to explore an area of math not normally covered in undergraduate classes, and
facilitate 1:1 mentorship from people who are a little further along the academic and career path.
At the beginning of the semester, the DRP matches students with mentors based on shared math interests. Each student-mentor pair then decides on a topic to study and a book to read over the semester.
Students are expected to:
meet with their mentors weekly for about an hour to discuss the week's reading,
commit at least 2 hours each week, outside the meetings, to independently work through the text, and
give a 15 min presentation at the end of the semester that introduces their topic to the other students and mentors.
Mentors are expected to:
attend a virtual mentor training/orientation at the beginning of the semester,
help facilitate the choosing of a topic to study,
guide their students through the learning of the topic, including outlining a study plan for them to follow and answering questions, and
help their students prepare for the presentations at the end.
The DRP has some funds to:
offer (modest) stipends to students and mentors,
reimburse students and mentors for books purchased in their DRP projects, and
provide mentors with licensed Zoom accounts.
The DRP is based on similar programs at other institutions. For a list of some of these programs, please see the DRP Network.