Last summer I attended an REU program at the University of Oklahoma directed by Professors K.B. Lee, Andy Miller, and Murad Ozaydin. There were nine participants (six men and three women) in the eight-week program. One caveat that pertains to Harvard students: last year the program started on May 20, before the end of spring exams. I had to start a week late.

The participants were divided into three project groups, with some graduate students at O.U. and participants from previous years adding to the nine of us. All the projects were related to group actions on low-dimensional topological structures. In varying degrees the projects involved graph theory, computational group theory, and elementary number theory. The emphasis was definitely on working in groups rather than individually, with a lot of guidance from the professors. The first three weeks were devoted to lectures covering topics which would be needed for the projects (for example, the Cayley graph of a group given by generators and relations.)

The housing was included free for project participants, and was of good quality, if a bit crowded. Weekday dinners at the O.U. dining hall were included as well; other meals we either cooked in the apartment kitchens, ate in one of the local restaurants, or brought a bag lunch. Norman, Oklahoma is not a booming metropolis, but there are movie theatres, record stores, etc., and generally people did not seem bored.

Everyone came out of the project with a completed paper (in most cases, of joint authorship) and two of us will be presenting our work in at the Cincinnati AMS conference. The stipend for the program was $2000, with a $250 travel allowance. (Keep in mind that this will almost certainly not cover travel expenses from Boston--my ticket was $500.)

--Joe Kanapka '94