Projects

Overcoming Geographic Isolation with Research Communities

By Elizabeth Gross, PI

Peer-to-peer collaboration is essential for PhD students, helping them develop research skills, enhance their publication records, and build professional support networks. It also fosters key workplace skills for careers both within and beyond academia. However, these collaborative opportunities are often limited or unavailable at small, geographically isolated institutions, where research groups are too small and remote to enable such connections. This project will pilot and investigate an innovative model for using designed research communities to overcome some of the professional challenges faced by mathematics PhD students at geographically isolated institutions.

The core idea is to form research communities for mathematics doctoral students at geographically isolated institutions via a semester-long mentored research experience and follow-up activities. This project will pilot the formation of three research communities over the course of the grant, each combining several students from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Mathematics Ph.D. program with visiting students from other institutions.

To build a lasting community, the interactions will be multidimensional: the centerpiece will be an intensive, collaborative research project, but this will be buttressed by professional development related to teaching and outreach. This project will investigate the extent to which these designed research communities can provide some of the known benefits of peer-to-peer collaboration.

 

Read the abstract