Tondeur Career Initiatives

Tondeur BIG Career Activities at MAA Section Meetings

With the support of a generous donation from Philippe and Claire-Lise Tondeur, the MAA is offering financial support for a round of BIG Career Activities at MAA Section Meetings. “BIG” stands for business, industry and government.

This seed funding aims to kick-start or enhance ongoing inclusion of BIG career events at section meetings.  The efforts are coordinated with SIAM and AMS activities and two online resources: the new MAA Connect online platform will be a place that sections can share information and experience about running career events. The BIG SIGMAA and the BIG Math Network have additional information about careers.  The BIG Jobs Guide, a paperback published by SIAM can also serve as a resource.
 

MAA Sections will propose to deliver at least three new or enhanced BIG-career-focused activities at their Section meeting, such as:

• Invite a BIG speaker to talk about mathematics in their work (a topic of interest to professionals and students).
• Offer a mock interview game (testing at MathFest 2019 and available from MAA at JMM 2020).
• Offer a résumé review service.
• Invite a former PIC Math participant to share their experience of building a course with an industry component.
• Organize a career panel.
• Help another Section replicate what you have done at your section (you can use the Section Officer's MAA Connect site to advertise your help and find a partner section).

In addition to these activities, we encourage sections to think about the ways they use the word "faculty" to refer to meeting participants from the working world, and to recognize that the term might not include MAA members such as those from BIG careers and those who are K-12 teachers.

Successful proposals will be eligible to receive up to $2000, with $1000 in advance of the meeting to support preparations and travel for speakers and additional $1000 after they report on the activities to support future BIG career activities. Sufficient support is available for each section to receive funding once in Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021 or Fall 2021.  

Schedule

Proposal

Please email your proposal to [email protected]. The proposal should include the following information (and you should save the information to include in your final report):
 

1. Meeting information
   a. Name of Section
   b. Date of Section Meeting when activities will occur
   c. Location of Meeting where activities will occur
    
2. Organizer information
   a. Name of primary organizer and MAA point of contact
   b. Email address of the primary organizer (who will be the main point of contact).
   c. Name and email address of at least 1 other co-organizer.
    
3. Career Activity Plan
   a. Please describe what kinds of BIG career activities your section has offered in the past.
   b. Please describe up to 3 BIG career activities that you will implement at this meeting, along with the budget for each activity.   
   c. Additional Activities:  Please describe any additional BIG career activities that you will implement at this meeting, along with the budget for those activities.  
    
4. Reporting Plan
   a. Please describe how you will collect feedback from participants on these activities, so that you can share it in your report.
   b. If you are asking survey questions after the conference, include a draft of those questions.
   c. We request that you count participation somehow, and please describe that plan.
    
5. Budget
   a. Itemized budget - please provide a breakdown of how you plan to spend the funds.
   b. Advance funding request and justification- up to $1000 is available before the meeting (see schedule above). Note how much advanced funding you will need and why.
   c. Total budget - please provide the total budget for the proposed activities.

Report

Your report is due according to the schedule above.  It will need to include, for each proposed activity, an estimate of the number of participants who joined that activity, how you think it went (and how you drew that conclusion), and your plans for the future with respect to that activity.  Please also include any recommendations for other sections trying the same activity - we will collect them and share with all sections. We will share these reports with our sponsors and evaluators of this program and share aggregate information more publicly.

Your report should take the form of a single PDF, that also includes your proposal.  Please email reports to [email protected].

Resources

The MAA BIG Career Interview Card Game

The MAA BIG Career Interview card game was tested at 2019 MAA MathFest and the next version will be available at JMM 2020 for purchase and for Spring section meetings. 

MAA Connect

We will be sharing some resources on MAA Connect in the Section Heads group and we hope you will post your own resources as well.