The Tennessee REU

The program at UT (pronounced "yoo taay") consists of 10 undergraduates each working individually with an advisor from the UT mathematics department or from the math/stat/cs division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Projects are selected by the advisor, usually before the program starts, and work on the project is entirely individual. Students are required to give a brief talk at the end of the program on their work.

In addition to the individual projects, students are required to attend two classes during the program. Each class meets for half of the program at an unfortunately early hour. Class topics are slightly out of the mainstream; they are chosen with the expectation that program participants haven't seen the material at their home universities. During my summer (1995) the topics were chaos and circle packing, both at an elementary level.

All of the students stayed in university dorms during my summer (1995). There were occasional social activities arranged by the program director and her assistant.

Advisors and Projects

I was fortunate to have a good advisor, Morwen Thistlethwaite, in that he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about knot theory (my project area) and he was able to give me a sense of how different aspects of the subject fit together logically and historically. Even so, he was not familiar with my prior preparation, and his initial project was inappropriate. Consequently, it took me a substantial amount of time to find a suitable project. A few of the students, Joshua Sabloff included, seemed to be satisfied with their topics (in terms of interest and difficulty). Most students, however, were at least somewhat unsatisfied with their projects.

In general, the advisors don't expect their students to have any previous familiarity with their project topics, so the projects are generally rather underwhelming. Unfortunately, the advisors' expectations seemed to be accurate for most of the program participants, and many of the students spent almost the entire summer working on background reading instead of research.

I highly recommend contacting your proposed advisor beforehand in order to determine if the project is appropriate for you. You might also communicate your precise background. Also, you might want to find out about the advisor's interests and experience. You had to convince them to accept your application, and now they should convince you to accept their offer.

Other Participants

During my summer, there was almost no collaboration between students. As I mentioned previously, each student is assigned a different advisor and a different subject, so there is no official mechanism to encourage collaboration. The one slight exception was that three of us worked together on a few exercises from the first class.

In fact, many of the other students exhibited ambivalence, even distaste, for mathematics! The dorms were particularly free from mathematical and otherwise academic discussion. I think that this resulted both from a desire among the majority of the students to have some time away from their projects and the relative inexperience of most of the other students, but it was certainly carried to an extreme extent.

Social and Intellectual Activities

It is difficult to find entertainment in Knoxville for an evening or a free afternoon. Program participants who were used to the usual amenities of a college town were quite disappointed by the offerings of Knoxville.

However, if you have access to a car (it is practically certain that someone in the program will bring a car), the surrounding area has a fair supply of natural beauty. Within a two hour drive, you can reach Great Smokey Mountain National Park, Lookout Mountain, Cumberland Gap, and the Big South Fork Nationall Recreation Area. From hiking to canoeing to "creeking," the possbilities are numerous. Furthermore, Atlanta is within striking distance for a weekend, and it is even possible to get to New Orleans over the 4th of July weekend.

The director of the program tried to organize a number of dinners and lunches together, but these were of mixed success. The most enjoyable group foray was a rafting trip on the Ocoee river. Incidentally, this river was being modified for the Olympic games, so look for it on TV in '96.

Mathematical Impressions

Relative to term-time Harvard, this program doesn't offer a substantial mathematical experience. It is possible to learn a great deal and have a mathematically or intellectually productive summer at UT, but you will have to go beyond the official structure of the program for this.

One of the things that UT lacks in the summer are frequent faculty and graduate student talks and colloquia. As a partial substitute, the REU program requires each advisor to give a talk on their work in place of one regular class meeting. Many of these lectures were rather well done, especially the talks given by Professors Johannson, Dydak, and Thistlethwaite.

Food and Shelter

Program participants usually live in the university dorms. I recommend against this. The cost of staying in the dorms is rather high, and although the dorm rooms are billed as apartments, they are somewhat below the standard of Harvard dorms. Furthermore, the dorm rooms are a fair distance from the library and the math building.

For more information, send e-mail to
Joshua Greene (jcgreene@math) (the author of this review) or
Joshua Sabloff (sabloff@fas)

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