MCTP Program Guidelines

Program Overview

Mentoring through Critical Transition Points (MCTP) is an exciting program — funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) — where you get paid to work with graduate student or faculty mentors on a research project. This research project will be on something that you and your mentor are both interested in and will give you a chance to apply what you've learned in class to a novel research problem.

Academic research is very different from course work and the MCTP program is a great way to experience it first-hand. Finding out if you love research is especially important if you're thinking of going to graduate school.

If you're accepted into the MCTP program, you'll do 5 or 10 hours of research a week during the semester and 10 or 20 hours a week during the summer. Then at the end of each semester you'll write a report and a short webpage summary about what you've done. Since presenting your findings is an important part of research, you'll also be required to give a short talk once each year at either the fall MCTP Undergraduate Research Conference or the spring SIAM Front Range Student Conference.

Responsibilities

Research

While you don't have to hand in time sheets, you have to work on your research for at least as many hours a week as you're being paid for. You'll also need to meet with your mentor frequently to make good progress on your research — you're learning a new skill and you'll need your mentor's help to correct your missteps and keep from going down too many blind-alleys.

Semester Review

At the end of each semester, you'll need to submit a paper summarizing what you've been studying and what you've learned. Your paper should be about ten pages and typed in LaTeX, Word, or Open Office. It should be carefully written and edited — as if you were preparing to submit it to a journal — with all your sources correctly cited.

I strongly recommend that you spend a couple hours every week working on your semester review. Writing scientific prose takes a surprisingly long time and you'll be busy with your coursework at the end of the semester. Don't forget to have your mentor read over your drafts and make suggestions.

If you're not familiar with LaTeX, The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX is a great place to start. For help typesetting advanced math, check Chapter 8 ofThe LaTeX Companion (in the Newton lab).

Webpage Summary

At the end of each semester, you'll also need to prepare (or update) a 1–2 page summary of your research project. You must submit it in either Word or Open Office, so we can post it on the Applied Math webpage. Be sure to include:

  • the problem you're studying,
  • how you're trying to solve it,
  • what you've figured out,
  • what else you're planing to do on the project,
  • a short biography of you (and your group mates), and
  • a short list of references.

Research Conference

You must present your research at one of the two student conferences — the fall MCTP Undergraduate Research Conference or the spring SIAM Front Range Student Conference. We'd like you to present your research at both conferences, but you only need to give a talk at one of them.

Submission of Materials

After your mentor has reviewed your semester review and webpage summary, then you should email them to your adviser.