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 of project director;
- A brief plan for the proposed conference, including schools from which the participants would likely be drawn, as well as likely numbers of student participants and presenters;
- Methods of publicizing the conference to all institutions in the geographic region;
- Information about primary organizers and support personnel;
- A budget with budget justification;
- A letter of support from a Department Chair, Dean, and/or Academic Vice President of the host institution (only for conferences that have not been supported by the MAA RUMC funding in the past).
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:
- Hudson River Conference
- Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
- Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference
- Youngstown State University
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.
Please detail all sources of funding in your proposal, 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.
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 Michael Dorff, the Program Director, at mdorff@math.byu.edu with questions about the RUMC program.
The MAA Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conferences program is supported by National Science Foundation grant DMS-0846477.