The Directed Reading Program (DRP) organized by Mathematics and Statistics graduate students and allies is starting with a bang its 6th semester. They set up a table at the Duck Pond for Welcome Back Days (see picture). The newly minted officers are Graduate Students José Jairo Garcia and Daniel Havens. Former Chief of Operations Austin Bell just graduated with a MS in Mathematics in May 2023, he will be around as a Part-time Instructor of Mathematics for AY 22-23 and will help with the DRP. Austin brought the DRP to UNM when he arrived in the middle of the pandemic in Fall 2020. It was a wonderful way to create community at a time it was sorely needed. We are glad to see it grow and bloom!

The Math DRP is a UNM student organization since Spring 2021, which pairs interested undergraduates and graduate students for independent study projects. Undergrads and math grad students will work through a math book or paper together over the course of a semester, culminating in presentations from the undergraduate on a fun thing they learned. In select cases, undergrads maybe able to conduct research with the grads.Their goal is to enable motivated undergraduates to engage with math in more depth and breadth than a classroom setting typically allows, and to foster a tight-knit mathematically community at UNM.

To date DRP have engaged an average of 8-9 undergraduate (or HS in Spring 2022) students per semester by an average of 6-7 mentors (graduate and a couple undergraduate students). Fall 2023 already counts 7 grad student mentors, one undergrad mentor who can lead his own group, and Dr. Chris Holden from Honors College, who has been one of biggest supporters from the beginning, and would like to join a group! That makes 9 enthusiastic mentors ready to engage undergraduate students in reading mathematics!

Here is the UNM Math DRP webpage https://math.unm.edu/research/mathematics-directed-reading-program-drp.