RUMC

Applications for RUMC Funding

Awards

The purpose of this grant is to provide support for institutions or groups of institutions wishing to initiate or expand undergraduate mathematics conferences that draw participants from a particular geographical region.

The conferences that this grant supports are expected to be continuing, at least on a biannual basis. All applicants for funding, should indicate how the conference will be supported after the expiration of the grant.

The awards are to cover a portion of the typical expenses involved with hosting a conference when a major portion of the conference activity involves undergraduate student talks. The expenses covered by the award are primarily those involving lunch and refreshments for participants and modest funds for travel to assist students who want to attend the conference but do not have support from their home institution. We encourage organizers to seek additional funds to cover expenses not eligible under this grant, such as cost of supporting an invited speaker. Awards from the grant may not be used to support facilities of the host institution nor to provide prizes or other items for the participants.

The majority of past awards have been between $1000 and $2000, with a few very large conferences exceeding this amount and some small conferences requesting less.

Preference will be given to proposals received by May 15 of the academic year prior to the proposed conference. Although proposals may be submitted at any time, those that do not meet the deadline can be funded only if sufficient funds remain.

Application Materials and Handbooks

To apply for support, please submit all proposal materials online.

During the course of the online application procedure, you will be asked to provide the following information:

The title of your conference, dates, location, name, contact information and two-page CV of project director.
A brief plan for the proposed conference.
A proposal narrative (as a PDF file upload), which should not exceed three pages.
A budget with budget justification. This should be included in the narrative.
A letter of support in the Supplementary Documents section (only for conferences that have not been supported by the MAA RUMC funding in the past).

Narrative: Provide the following information on no more than three pages in PDF format, using 12-point type and a standard font:

Intended dates of the conference, including a tentative conference schedule;
Schools from which the participants would likely be drawn;
Likely number of undergraduate students, faculty, and others (such as graduate students), broken down by numbers of students from the host school and of those from other institutions;
Likely number of undergraduate presentations;
Methods of publicizing the conference to all institutions in the geographic region;
Primary organizers and support personnel;
Plans for supporting the funded activities of this conference on a continuing basis without the funding supplied by this grant.

Conferences having received support in the past should indicate how these anticipated numbers correspond to historic values. Established conferences requesting grants should detail how the awarding of this grant will increase the number of students who attend, and in particular encourage an increase in the number of student presentations at the conference. The grant is not intended to be used to replace funding from traditional sources.

For samples of the format of current conferences you might like to refer to the following web sites. Many of these conferences have been running for a number of years, and although the formats vary, each has the components that the grant seeks to encourage. These are provided for informational purposes only, and are not intended to imply that conferences with other formats would be unacceptable:

Budget: fill out the budget form indicating the total amount of money that you are requesting from this grant, broken down by the categories on the budget page.

One-page budget justification is required (as PDF attachment) and should specify the total amount of funding that you expect will be required to run this conference. Please detail all sources of funding because preference will be given to conferences that maximize the likely value of the experience that students receive relative to the grant expenditure. Specify costs covered by other sources. You may include support services provided by the host institution.

Other Documentation: Please include a letter of support from your department chair or an administrator in a position to commit institutional resources.

The deadline for receipt of proposals is May 15. Consideration of proposals usually takes about six weeks. For further guidance, please see the Conference Program Director's Handbook.

Please contact Doug Faires, the Program Director, at faires@math.ysu.edu with questions about the RUMC program.

The MAA Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conferences program is supported by National Science Foundation grant DMS-0846477.