School of Mathematical Sciences Postgraduate Training & Mentorship Seminar
Topic outline
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This seminar is guided by the philosophy that postgraduates can prepare for the large variety of responsibilities they will encounter at the next stage of their careers, including balancing high-quality research with excellent teaching.
Sessions will follow two main areas:
- Development of teaching practices within mathematics
- Creation of a professional portfolio as a mathematician
The first area focuses on TA Training and best practices in the classroom specific to the effective and clear communication of mathematics and mathematical concepts. We will also propose mini-projects which should help participants develop meaningful Teaching Statements for postdoc/academic job applications.
The second area addresses a variety of issues surrounding life as a mathematics Ph.D., including formation of a "complete" academic portfolio, giving talks, writing papers, looking for postdocs, and life beyond your viva.
Sessions are intended to provide you with mentorship and interaction with staff and colleagues outside of your immediate research group, and to help you build important secondary relationships within the School.We are planning the seminar this year flexibly so that we can prioritize activities based on your interests and input! The seminar is meant to be dovetailed with the existing training in place at QMUL, including the 1st-year induction, PGR Teaching Support Day and available CAPD courses and can be claimed on the PGR Skills Points database (required at each of your annual reviews).
Over the course of the seminar, we will be compiling resources with commentary for your use: suggested reading on effective teaching of mathematics, websites to look for postdocs and academic jobs, LaTeX templates for your CVs, outreach opportunities, etc. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have something you wish to add to the list or if you would like to see a particular topic included.
Your teaching support network:
The Module Organizers : Dr Shabnam Beheshti and Dr WolframJust
PGR Student Representatives:
Teaching and Student Support Manager: Simon Rawstron
PGR Programme Officer: Katie Hale
Director of Education: Mark Walters
Director of PGR Studies: Alex Fink
Student Support Officer: William Ng - Development of teaching practices within mathematics
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We will discuss some of the key issues of your new life as a PhD student at SMS. Find a few tips and guidelines in the pdf below:
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Since one of your activities while a PhD student at QMUL will be tutoring undergraduate modules, it is convenient for you to read the last updated version of tutorial structure, which you can find in the file above:
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You can use the documents in the folder to help you establish expectations for groupwork submissions:
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You can use the documents in below when discussing assessment/grading of group work.
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- Writing in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics, by J. Meir and T. Rishel, MAA (1998).
- Learning and Teaching; Bloom's taxonomy, by J. S. Atherton (2013).
- Are we encouraging students to think mathematically? by Dr. Hallett. This essay is excerpted from How to Teach Mathematics by S. Krantz, AMS (1999).
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by Z. S. Siddiqui, D. Jonas-Dwyer, and S. Carr. See Medical Teacher, v.29 297-300 (2007).
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We save this last session of the term to discuss any items of concern you may have regarding what it has been covered already in the seminar or any other issue.
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TAs/Demonstrators often do not receive personalised feedback from students, since our module evaluations do not explicitly ask for this. One workaround is to create your own feedback form and pass it out sometime near the star and/or end of term (depending on whether you want to make real-time changes or have students reflect on your overall teaching approach). Here is a tex file that you can edit as you like, to get you started. The intended output and necessary logo file are also appended.
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Discussion with Thomas Stead, SMS Student Recruitment and Outreach Manager
Suggestions (You need not be an extrovert to participate and enjoy yourself):
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- Participate in Pint of Science or StoryCollider.
- Follow the idea of Ph.D. candidates in Mathematics departments at Rutgers, Yale, UConn, Chicago, UC Berkeley, and Maryland by creating a Directed Reading Program.
- Don't just attend conferences this summer: how about a Navajo Math Circle? Maybe a film will inspire you...
- The Royal Institution has a long and successful history of public engagement and already works with the SMS at QMUL!
- Write an article for Chalkdust Magazine, an online publication successfully launched by the maths postgraduates at UCL.
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Additional Funding
- I would like to bring to your attention family-friendly SMS policies, applicable to both staff and postgraduates. In particular,the SMS has a dedicated fund for conference child care support. If you are a student-parent, there are also support resources and information available at studentparents.org, in partnership with the National Student Union.
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I would still like to know what has been useful and and what could use improvement for next year. Please print and fill out this updated
Feedback Form
and put it in my pigeonhole on [the 3rd floor] when you have a few free moments. Many thanks in advance!
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