Apply to be a Mentor

The application consists of a personal statement, course proposals, CV, and one or two letters of recommendation. You can submit your application through our online system, and the deadline to apply is February 12, 2025.

The Personal Statement and Class Proposals

Personal Statement: Please write us a page or two about yourself, why you want to join Mathcamp and how you think you could contribute. Describe your qualifications, experience (construe that broadly), and goals for this summer at Mathcamp.

Class Proposal: Describe in detail a one-week class that you would like to teach at Mathcamp this summer. You can see examples of past Mathcamp classes here (as we advertised them to students), but topics change from year to year, so feel free to design your dream class. We are looking for a coherent, interesting curriculum that demonstrates your creativity as a teacher.

Class proposals are typically 1–5 pages long (but feel free to express your ideas at their natural length). Here are some things that you may want to address in your proposal:

• The overall trajectory of the class and/or the topics that you plan to cover each day;
• What level of students the class is aimed at and what mathematical background it assumes;
• Potential problems for students to work on (in class or for homework);
• What a typical class period will look like (e.g. are you presenting material at the board? are students working on problems during class? some combination of both?);
• A discussion of why you chose this particular topic and/or why you designed the class the way you did.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Mathcamp classes vary in length and format, but a typical one-week class meets one hour a day for five days; this is what you should be aiming at in your proposal.
• All Mathcamp students are extremely bright and motivated, but their mathematical backgrounds vary widely. A few students may be seeing proofs by induction for the first time at camp; others have taken college math classes and will happily follow a development of Stokes' Theorem on manifolds; most fall somewhere in between. Accordingly, Mathcamp offers classes at many different levels. Part of designing your class is deciding what level you want to pitch it at.
• All Mathcamp students know high school math through precalculus. Although most of them know much more than that, if your class requires any background beyond precalculus, you need to explicitly list it as a prerequisite. Prerequisites should be described as specifically as possible: e.g. not "group theory", but "the definition of a group" or "normal subgroups and the First Isomorphism Theorem".
• All Mathcamp classes give students problems to think about outside of class, but the instructor decides whether this homework is required, recommended, or optional. If the homework is required, you can assume that a typical student will spend about an hour a day on it (but not much more, since they have homework for several classes).

Additional Class Ideas: A Mathcamp mentor typically teaches 4–5 different classes over the course of the summer, though it's common to propose many more class ideas than end up making it into the final schedule. In addition to your detailed class proposal above, please give several brief descriptions (a sentence or two is fine) for 2–3 other classes or projects that you might like to run at Mathcamp. Please include enough details for us to understand the content of the class and the main ideas that students should take away.

Outside the Classroom: One of the best things about Mathcamp is that each staff member and student shares their own interests with the community. We want to know what you're excited about, so tell us your ideas for interesting and fun activities, math-related or otherwise! You can get a sense of typical events from previous summers here, but feel free to be creative.

Recommendation Letters

We ask for one letter of recommendation on your behalf. Please show our description of the mentor position (https://www.mathcamp.org/mentor/) to your recommender, and ask them to comment on your suitability for such a job.

While we are interested in your strength both as a mathematician and as a teacher, we generally find recommendations that focus on teaching to be more informative. (However, it is worth emphasizing that some of our best mentors have had little formal teaching experience before their first summer at Mathcamp.) You are also welcome to submit two letters: one from someone who knows you well mathematically, and one from someone who is familiar with your teaching ability. However, this is definitely not a requirement.

In addition, if you know someone who has been involved with Mathcamp in the past, and you would like us to keep them in mind as a reference, you may list their name(s) and contact information.

How to Apply

You can now submit your application through our online system at appsys.mathcamp.org. All applications received by February 12, 2025 will receive equal consideration.

Thanks for your interest in working at Mathcamp!