Math 391/392: Independent Study/Research

This page is meant to clarify the process for requesting Independent Study (Math 291/391) or Research (Math 392) with professors in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, including myself. When my schedule permits, I enjoy supervising Independent Coursework on advanced topics that are not covered in our regular curriculum… especially when it aligns with my research or pedagogical priorities!

Please be aware that Independent Coursework is uncommon—if your request cannot be accommodated, you should not take it personally! Especially for junior faculty members, the department is focused on protecting the time and work-life balance of its faculty. The approval of independent coursework requests have important repercussions to how we effectively allocate our resources, including maintaining sustainable paths to tenure and promotion while continuing to offer a robust catalog of upper-level courses. This is context on the material considerations that faculty must account for and which may not be immediately apparent from the student’s perspective.

If you are interested in Independent Coursework with me

You should:

  • Explore options with a small group of colleagues—this will increase the department’s odds of smiling upon your request.
  • Select a topic that does not overlap substantially with a course already offered at Carleton (i.e., an Independent Study on Functional Analysis is disallowed, even if I would love to read Debnath and Mikusiński’s Introduction to Hilbert Spaces with Applications together).
  • Make arrangements in the term prior to the desired Coursework!
    • Once you have spoken with your intended mentor, they will bring your request to the department and receive an unofficial decision.
    • If the department permits the Independent Coursework to proceed, consider the relevant forms and create a shared document to coordinate responses.

Expect that:

  • It will run for 2–3 credits and operate by the following format:
    • We meet once a week for an hour and a half (2 credits), or twice a week for an hour (3 credits).
    • Students present material at the board; we will ask one another questions and make comments.
    • Students are responsible for setting and sharing an agenda before each meeting; requests for me to provide a short supplementary lecture on specific material should be made at least 48 hours in advance.
  • It will last one term (though it can be extended to a second in rare cases).
  • It will be peer-evaluated and prioritize inclusive community-building—your colleagues will provide feedback on your growth as a lecturer, your involvement to discussions and other collaborative efforts, and your individual intellectual contributions.

Past Independent Coursework

  • Math 291: Math and power, Spring 2024. We read weekly from many sources and held regular discussions, focused on dynamics of mathematical institutions and broadly centered on questions of decoloniality, partially to inform objectives and materials for an updated Math History course. This was our reading list.
  • Math 392: Murmurations of elliptic curves via persistent homology, Winter–Spring 2024. We worked through Klein’s Lectures On The Icosahedron And The Solution Of Equations Of The Fifth Degree and used data scientific methods in persistent homology to assess foundational phenomena regarding emerging work on analogues of the icosahedral function.
  • Math 291: Introduction to Lie groups, Spring 2023. We read from Rossmann’s Lie Groups: An Introduction through Linear Groups in pursuit of concrete and accessible materials to supplement Math 362: Representation Theory.