Program

GAANN Fellowships cover a period of three years. (The Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics continues support for GAANN Fellows as teaching or research assistants, for up to two additional years.) GAANN Fellows are assigned a teaching mentor as well as a research mentor who will, respectively, help them navigate the teaching and research elements of the GAANN program.

GAANN Fellows will be engaged in fulfilling the departmental requirements for the Ph.D. degree, which include coursework, passing the Introductory Exam, passing the Ph.D. Candidacy Exam, the Graduate Board Oral (GBO) Exam, and writing and defending a doctoral dissertation of original research. As they develop their research program, GAANN Fellows will be provided funding to assist in their research and professional development; this includes funding for travel to conferences and for the purchase of books, academic supplies, and membership to professional societies.

The capstone teaching experience of every GAANN Fellow, to be accomplished before the completion of the third year of Fellowship, will be the teaching of an undergraduate course with the Fellow as the sole instructor. This will include preparation of all course materials, lecturing, oversight of TAs and graders, and the assignment of semester grades.

During every semester of the fellowship, each Fellow will serve as a teaching assistant for a departmental course. These assignments will be designed to rotate the Fellows through the full spectrum of our departmental courses.

Once a year during the fellowship, each GAANN Fellow will deliver a student seminar. This seminar will be on a research topic of the Fellow's choice, commensurate with the Fellow's advancement in our program. These seminars will be advertised in the same venues as the department's weekly seminar series.

Each GAANN Fellow will be required to enroll in and successfully complete the course 500.781/360.781 Preparation for University Teaching, which is currently taught at Johns Hopkins, or its equivalent. This course puts the students through microteaching exercises, and covers such topics as leading a discussion, teaching a large lecture course, dealing with diversity in the classroom, understanding student learning styles, syllabus construction, assessment, and developing one's own teaching portfolio. We will expect the GAANN Fellows to actively maintain a dossier to document their teaching experiences using e-portfolio.

As GAANN Fellows near their capstone teaching experience, they will be encouraged to register for credit in the course 550.505 Applied Mathematics Pedagogy, wherein they would apprentice under an instructor of a departmental course. The Fellow will observe the instructor's lectures, regularly meet with the instructor to discuss pedagogy, and deliver one or two regular class lectures under supervision of the instructor.