The following report is my report in Mathematics Today April.

I am newly employed by the IMA as University Liaison Officer to further the aims of the University Liaison initiative. The aims of this are to increase membership (particularly amongst undergraduates, postgraduates and recent graduates), to raise awareness of the IMA and its work among university students and recent graduates and to increase engagement of students with mathematics through the IMA.

Mathematics graduates will benefit from membership of the IMA, and mathematics itself will benefit from the strong professional body increased membership will allow.

I am interested to hear from members who have views on this project and am particularly keen to hear from those who feel they have something to contribute to this work by email to peter.rowlett@ima.org.uk.

Readers may be aware from the previous Mathematics Today that this work is supported by a bequest from Professor Clement Workman Jones, for which the IMA is very grateful.

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As part of this work I am aiming to raise awareness of existence of the IMA (an awareness which among undergraduate students tends to be quite wanting) through recreational mathematics and careers events operated by university mathematical societies. These are usually student-run groups in universities with social and subject based components. [If you are in contact with such a group and they would like to be involved please contact me on peter.rowlett@ima.org.uk].

I am looking to produce a list of speakers who are willing, in principle, to speak to students in universities on recreational mathematics or mathematics careers topics. I would like to have a list of speakers, the topic(s) on which they are willing to speak and the areas of the country within which they are willing to travel to do so. Individual mathematical societies will then contact speakers directly to arrange specific events.

Before you dismiss yourself out of hand I would encourage you to think again! It is my experience that there are many mathematicians doing interesting work who are able to talk in an engaging way, but who say simply, “my work wouldn’t be of interest.” I would encourage you to imagine yourself as an undergraduate student studying mathematics but with little idea where it could take you and wonder how such a student might react to the story of some problem you have solved using mathematics or an overview of an area of advanced work barely touched on in their studies. If you speak in schools I would encourage you to consider that an undergraduate at 19 is not that different from a school student at 18 and topics which interest the latter would likely interest the former. And finally I would certainly encourage postgraduate students to hone their presentation skills by practising a talk about their research topic on local undergraduates (under an IMA banner, of course!).

I think as a speaker you will get a lot out of offering to speak at such events and you will be helping raise awareness of the IMA amongst university students, which will benefit the IMA greatly. If you are willing to be on this list of willing-in-principle speakers or have further questions, please contact me on peter.rowlett@ima.org.uk.

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Another aspect of raising awareness is the sticker you have hopefully received with your copy of Mathematics Today. I strongly encourage all members to display their sticker somewhere potential members will see it and that way you will be giving the IMA a presence at your organisation and helping this work greatly.

Activities Jan-Feb 2008

In January I visited HQ at Catherine Richards House in Southend-on-sea and met the Secretariat. I have attended various IMA meetings including Executive Board, the annual Branch representatives meeting and I have met with the University Liaison steering group.

I have visited the Universities of Manchester and Greenwich and had productive meetings with staff and students at both. I have met representatives of all the Branches except the Scottish Branch so far, at the Branch Representatives Meeting in London and at Branch events.

Representatives of University Mathematical Societies (RUMS)

University mathematical societies interested in engaging with this work are invited to nominate a member to join a group Representatives of University Mathematical Societies (RUMS), presently an email group, intended to improve communication between societies and with the University Liaison project. Contact me for more information on peter.rowlett@ima.org.uk.

Student page on IMA website

Some content has been collected that is hopefully of relevance to students on a new Student page on the IMA website. This is intended to be a main point of communication by this project and provides links to relevant areas of the IMA site and other resources from this project.

This provides links to the IMA Facebook group, a page on YouTube where student- and member-contributed videos will be placed and my blog.

Visit this at: www.ima.org.uk/student

Student section of Mathematics Today

I hope you will be pleased to see that what follows this report is a new feature for Mathematics Today, the Student Section. For this, Noel-Ann Bradshaw has written an entertaining piece on the activities of the mathematical society, MathSoc at the University of Greenwich. I hope this will be of interest.