January 26, 2005

Scholarship Rules and Regulations

1. A permanent scholarship committee should be established. The duties of this committee will be to decide on whom to award scholarships, departmental awards, and nominations of students for non-departmental awards, e.g., the Beckham award and other awards as assigned by the Head. Its membership should consist of five individuals: three from the undergraduate studies committee, one from the faculty at large, and one senior math major, no longer eligible for a scholarship, or a graduate student who received their undergraduate degree from A&M. The membership should be structured so that there is overlap of committee members from one year to the next. The director of the Mathematics Department honors program is to be a member of this committee.

2. The endowed scholarships. These scholarships should be used for recruiting and/or scholarships for current majors. The exact proportion may vary from one year to the next depending on needs and assets of the department.

• Criteria for receiving a recruiting scholarship consist of SAT scores, high school class ranking, high school grades (especially math grades), and high school attended. It is agreed that there may also be exceptional criteria such as school/region/national awards, advanced courses and placement records, financial need, and other factors that can be determining factors.

• Criteria for current majors consist of past performance in A&M mathematics courses, financial need, recommendation from faculty, and an essay.

• General procedures for determination of scholarship awards are that each committee member rates each of the student files. Then each committee member gives each candidate a rank from one to three. (Here a “one” is the highest category, with “three” the lowest.) These marks are tallied for all committee members for each students. Generally, those with the lowest total are deemed the strongest of the students and should be considered first for available scholarships.

3. Departmental awards. The committee recommends that the mathematics department set up the following awards for our undergraduate mathematics majors:

(a) A $100 cash prize to the two best undergraduate mathematics majors in the sequence 446/447 and the two best math undergraduate students in the sequence 415/416. We recommend that the winners take the year sequence, but realize that in certain circumstances one or both of these awards may be deserved by a student who has not taken the first semester of the sequence.

(b) A $100 cash prize to the best undergraduate mathematics majors in each section of 407, 409, 411, 417, 425, 431, and 467.

(c) The winning students will be determined by the instructors of the respective courses. If an instructor feels that no student is worthy of this award none will be given. (The department should discuss whether other factors besides performance in a single course are to be factored into criteria for winning one of these awards.)

(d) The department has received a commitment of $2000 from the Owens fund from last year, and an additional $2000 for this year too. The committee recommends that this money be used for these awards, and for two or three academic scholarships to be awarded for the next school year.

Both Professors Johnson and Pisier prefer that we do not advertise any connection between these awards and the Owens fund.

4. The committee also recommends that a certificate of achievement be given to any of our majors, enrolled full time in either the fall or spring semester, who attain a 4.0 average in their math courses for that semester. This is intended to apply only to those majors who are currently enrolled in or have already taken Math 220. There is a minority request that we also honor those of our majors who are taking 400 level courses, but have not yet taken Math 220.