A typical day looks like this.

At Mathcamp's residential program, weeks start on Tuesday, and classes are offered from Tuesday to Saturday. During the week, in the morning and early afternoon, there will be four 50-minute blocks for classes and time set aside for lunch. You will be typically teaching during one of those four class blocks, and can do what you want during the other three. Most of the campers will be busy in classes, so the three blocks of downtime are great for things like: class-planning, sitting in on other people's classes, or sleeping in. In the afternoons, you'll hold informal office hours ("TAU": Time, Academic, Unscheduled), and if you're interested, you can attend the colloquium talk.

During the evening, campers and staff will organize lots of events and just hang out. You can partake in the events however much you want/have time for, or spend time preparing for classes and relaxing!

Saturdays are considered a weekday, but they work a bit differently. There are still four class blocks, but no TAU or colloquium. Instead, you'll have some time to meet with your academic advisees, and the campers participate in relays. (Relays are fun problem-solving competitions that often involve campers running/swimming/playing games.)

Sunday and Monday are the weekend at Mathcamp. Field trips happen on these days, and there is lots of spare time to recover and prep class.

Yes! You get to choose how much time you want to interact with campers and how much downtime you need. It is important to have a rapport with the campers so that you will have good attendance in your classes, and you'll have lots of opportunities for informal playing with campers. However, your health, sanity and class preparedness are your top priorities. Some staff view interacting with campers as their downtime, while other staff enjoy leaving campus to recuperate. (But don't expect to get research or serious math studying done during camp: you'll be too busy.)

Most of the classes are taught by mentors. There are also a few full-time instructors ("faculty") who are past grad school, and we'll periodically bring in guest speakers to give classes and colloquia. (The guest lecturers are specifically chosen for being awesome expositors and interesting people; you can hang out with them and learn neat stuff!) Sometimes short courses are taught by our undergraduate counselors, too! More info here.

The process of figuring out what classes you teach takes a bit of time. Mathcamp wants you to teach whatever you're excited about teaching, and you'll be paired with a more experienced Mathcamp instructor (your "mentor buddy") to help you pick your topics and craft your courses.

Campers come in with different backgrounds; some will be writing proofs for the first time at Mathcamp, and others will be ready for a sophisticated course in algebraic geometry. You can assume all the students have seen high school math up through Precalculus, and either have already or will get in the first week of camp a grounding in the fundamentals (like basic proof techniques, set notation, modular arithmetic, etc). As an overgeneralization, you can think of the new campers as being very good undergrads just starting upper division math, with returning (alumni) campers having had a bit more mathematics experience. Regardless, expect your students to be bright, creative, and very eager to learn!

You can also choose the difficulty level of your course and specify whatever prerequisite material you think is appropriate and reasonable. Classes are marked with an indicator of 1 to 4 chili peppers: in a 1 chili pepper class, every camper should be able to follow, whereas in a 4 chili pepper class, you can challenge the strongest student.

You can see the range of classes taught last year here.

Yes! While not a major focus at Mathcamp, we do have some students who are interested in problem-solving courses: some of these students will be competition novices, and others will have IMO medals. You can teach a full schedule of problem solving (1-2 classes per day), or a mix of problem solving and other topics. You can also take responsibility for creating and coordinating the weekly Team Problem Solving competition at camp. More info here.

Every year we try to include several computer science classes. In the past topics have included cryptography, quantum computing, and computational complexity theory. These classes are often very popular with the students and so we are excited to have applicants who are interested and able to teach them. Sometimes these classes are taught by math graduate students with an interest in CS, but in the past we have also had mentors who are computer science students with a strong interest in mathematics.

Each new mentor is assigned a "Mentor Buddy": a veteran instructor who helps guide you through the spring and summer. Your buddy can help you learn about Mathcamp's structure (logistically), culture (socioemotionally), and course style (pedagogically), and they'll help you work through the milestones leading up to and throughout the summer. Your Mentor Buddy is your go-to person.

You have lots of other resources, too: the Academic Coordinators serve as the lead for the instructional staff, and will be happy to work with you; there are several decades of documentation from past classes to help you learn about the kinds of classes that work well at Mathcamp; throughout the summer, "Teaching Tea" is an informal peer mentoring group that meets weekly to talk about math at Mathcamp; and the cohort of new Mentors often forms a bond. Overall, Mathcamp is a very collaborative environment, and you'll find that any fellow staff member will be happy to work with you when you have questions.

Your primary responsibility at Mathcamp will be teaching courses, and there are two big tasks that happen in the spring: proposing potential classes, and then once your your classes are assigned, preparing the classes you'll be teaching.

The typical teaching load is 3--5 week-long courses each summer. In May, you'll work with your Mentor Buddy to build a set of potential courses that you could teach over the summer, a selection of which will make up the 4 week schedule. The Academic Coordinators will then create a schedule for the summer, and once your courses are picked (by early June), it's time to start thinking specifics. The logistics and amount of preparation in advance is up to you, but everybody agrees that the more prep you've done ahead of time, the more relaxed you'll feel over the summer.

There's a significant non-mathematical aspect of the job, too: mentors, like everyone on the Mathcamp staff, are involved in the running of the program, from the mundane (buying post-its) to the philosophical (debating camp policies) to the absurd (playing blindfolded charades with campers). The whole staff team makes the program into the magical place that it is; we are all looking out for everyone's well-being and inventing new and creative ways to make camp a better experience. We're also all pitching in to get the day-to-day stuff done: you might participate in a "field trip", take a camper to the doctor, or set up . You might also sing with the students in the camp choir, lead a salsa-dancing workshop, or go on a sunrise hike. Teaching comes first, but mentors wear many hats.

We should let the mentors speak for themselves on this topic. This recent quote really captures it: