VIGRE

Mason Porter Takes Over Research Horizons

The Research Horizons/Pre Colloquium talks were initiated by Professor Erdos
two years ago. These are talks by GT faculty or visitors that are a survey of
a research interest of the faculty, or an introduction to that week's colloquium.

Professor Symington has been running the seminar for three semesters, and
now Mason Porter, in his second year as a VIGRE postdoc, will take over the duties. Mason has experience running a similar seminar at Cornell, where he was a grad student.

See the
most recent schedule.

This is a fine idea, and has been used at many places before it was taken up at Georgia Tech. The process of running one is much harder than it looks, as Professor Symington found out. The talks given in the seminar over the past three semesters are mostly GT faculty. Margaret Symington writes:

Overall I was pleased with the seminar last year: the talks were
typically great
and the attendence was reasonable -- typically between 3
and 7 students with a couple of washouts (no students) and a couple of
watersheds (many students), occasional undergraduates, and ususally
several postdocs and faculty.

As a postdoc, Mason may be in a better position than I was to
- take the "seminar pulse" of the students and figure out how best to
tailor the seminar to meet their needs and interests
- serve as a role model for asking questions in a talk
- keep the speaker at the appropriate level.

Thanks to all who offered to speak last year. Please keep volunteering
and please do talk with students about what seminars they should attend
given their interests -- both on a general level as well as letting them
know when there is a particular speaker that might be of particular
interest. This is crucial information that they really need to hear from
us.

best,
Margaret

Posted by lacey at August 5, 2003 01:59 PM