[RUME] number of doctoral advisees?

[Murphy, TJ]

Thanks to those of you who replied to my question of how many RUME 
doctoral students it's reasonable to advise at the same time. Several 
people said, "two", which is what my department chair says. And then 
of course there's Alan and Shandy.

My department chair says two, but I don't know whether it should be 
different for mathematics dissertations vs RUME dissertations, and 
that's why I brought the question to this group. I feel like I'm 
drowning and I'm trying to decide if that's because I am drowning or 
because I'm a wimp. So here's some details about the situation. I'd 
appreciate some perspective.

The University of Oklahoma is a Research I institution. The 
Department of Mathematics has 30-ish tenured/tenure-track faculty and 
70-ish graduate students. And here's our situation with the 
Undergraduate Curriculum and Pedagogy Research Option in the doctoral 
program, which has 2 faculty, both of whom serve on all RUME 
dissertation committees:

-- 2 students writing dissertations, data collection complete, expect 
to graduate 2006
-- 3 students collecting dissertation data, expect to graduate 2007
-- 2 students who will finish qualifying exams (which are written 
tests in analysis, algebra, and topology) this coming summer
-- 3 first-year graduate students known to be interested in the 
program, expect to complete qualifying exams in Summer 2008

10 total currently known to be interested in pursuing a PhD in RUME 
at OU. There are two sets of students who could increase the tally 
but we don't know about yet: pre-qualifying exam students who haven't 
told anyone yet and post-qualifying exam students who might want to 
switch from some other area of mathematics. And there is an unknown 
number of interested students who might not pass qualifying exams, 
thus reducing the number in the pipeline. I'm not sure how to think 
about the possible increase or decrease in the tally as I think about 
what the upcoming years look like for me.

In addition, this semester I am teaching Calculus 1 to 120 freshman 
and statistics to 35 seniors. My colleague is on sabbatical but 
otherwise he would also be teaching two classes with at least 35 
students in each. Teaching is 40% of our work (including work with 
doctoral students), with 40% devoted to research and 20% to service.

In self-defense I decided to adopt Alan's community model (I bet this 
is the first Alan has heard of that) so that the more experienced 
graduate students can help take care of the less experienced ones. 
Last fall, we started meeting weekly as a group for about an hour. 
These meetings have helped me substantially, although some of the 
students seem to resent being expected to come to these meetings that 
don't count for credit hours. Mostly I look into my future and can't 
figure out how I'm going to read all those dissertations as a 
committee member and advise the ones I'm the advisor for. My eyes and 
brain hurt just thinking about it.

At what point are we allowed to start telling students we can't take 
on any more? What should we say to students as the reason we aren't 
taking them on? For example ... are we obligated to take the five who 
are still pre-qualifying exams? I got a note from one of them 
explaining to me that he flew over here from Korea under the 
assumption that he would finish a PhD in the Pedagogy program if he 
successfully completed qualifying exams. Does the existence of the 
program guarantee to students that we will work with them? The 
Department is of the opinion that passing qualifying exams allows the 
student to enter into the doctoral program, but does not guarantee 
access to any particular person or even any particular area of 
mathematics. I don't know how to feel about that stance.

Do we need a third faculty member in RUME? Or do we just need a 
faculty member who isn't as whiny and wimpy as I am?

Thanks,
Dr. Teri Jo Murphy, Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics, University of Oklahoma