The IMA University grant scheme was as popular as ever this year. Here are some highlights from reports that we received showing the versatility of the grant and how its use can increase awareness of your university maths society. Find out more about University Liaison Grants.
University of Kent
We mainly split the money into three expense categories: payments for non-current assets, payments for consumption and savings. Through this spending, we were able to make our society more attractive to outsiders and attract more students to our socials. We had a few relatively successful socials that would not have been possible without the grant. Since at most of our meetings, mathematics played one role or another, I am confident that we did bring mathematics closer to non-mathematicians and at the same time, helped maths students appreciate their subject even more. Through the good financial starting point as well as the broadened base among students I do look forward to the society growing further next year as well as adding to the events provided to students.
IMA King’s College, London
Our primary goal this year for KCL MathSoc was to attempt to reduce the barrier that students felt existed between them and the teaching staff, for this we hosted a number of social events attempting to create a community within the whole of the Maths department. Though I still think that there is work to be done we definitely made some progress.
The secondary goal was to educate students with some useful skills not taught in the main course, the IMA Grant was used for this purpose. With it we funded two short courses that taught students LaTeX and then Mathematica, this will have been especially useful for the MSc students who would require LaTeX in their project. Students found them enjoyable and we received lots of positive feedback.
University of Aberdeen Mathematics Society
Having received the grant money, a ‘meet and greet’ event in the science department was set up. The aim was to encourage freshers and older maths students to socialise, get to know each other, and tell us what they would like from a maths society. Throughout the year, we used the money for social events that allowed students to spend time with their classmates outside the lecture theatre, as well as hosting talks from people who have careers in mathematics. Other uses included mathematical magazine subscriptions and maths society clothing, both of which were distributed amongst the members of our society. We also used the money to purchase posters and print off flyers that we placed around the campus, science department and library in order to promote or events and society activities.
The Students’ Actuarial Society (SAS) at Heriot-Watt
Thanks to help of the IMA, we managed to organise a record number of events. In particular, students enjoyed the talks given by industry leaders like Scottish Widows and EY on the impact of Brexit and implementation of Solvency II. These talks on important issues were organised throughout the year and gave students the opportunity to increase their knowledge of the sector.
SAS also added a competition to its calendar. This year it was in the style of a mock assessment centre where students were given the task of manging the finances of a large scale project. They had to budget, use logic and work as a team to deliver the best results. The judges from various backgrounds (academic and industry) gave valuable feedback to students who seemed to enjoy the event despite it lasting close to 3 hours.
To round off this year’s activities, the society organised the annual actuarial conference. Industry experts were invited to give talks on current events affecting the finance industry and actuarial profession. Presentations ranged from the history of insurance investment strategy to terrorism risk and even climate change. And, of course, no actuarial conference would be complete without a talk on the changes in the pension industry.
All guest speakers were clear to emphasise it is not only a strong maths ability that will help students succeed in the future but a willingness to accept change more often and be as dynamic as possible.
We could not have organised these events without the support from the IMA and so on behalf of the society I would like to thank them for their generosity and assistance throughout the year.
Queen Mary Maths Society
In November, a group of 25 members set off on a trip to The University of Warwick to attend the IMA Early Career Mathematicians’ Autumn Conference. Thanks to the sponsorship money awarded by the IMA, the society was able to subsidise the travel for these 25 members, enabling students from all backgrounds to attend. We thoroughly enjoyed our day at the conference, there was ample opportunity to network with fellow mathematicians in the early stages of their career and gain insight into the different paths a maths degree could take you.
To introduce members to new areas of mathematics, we invited the lecturers in the School of Mathematical Sciences at QM to host a guest lecture for our society members. Professor Wolfram Just kindly gave a talk on the intriguing world of fractals and Dr Shabnam Beheshti provided us with a small insight into her exciting area of research in General Relativity and Gravitational Waves. The talks were very well attended and thoroughly enjoyed by members. The Sponsorship from the IMA went towards the costs of holding these events.
The University of Surrey Mathematics Society
We arranged for a PhD student to run maths drop in sessions for everyone at the university. We had a wide variety of students visiting from actual maths students to nurses stuck on their coursework to people who simply had an appetite for maths that wasn’t being fed by their course. This enabled the society to engage with over 300 students across the campus who previously may not have known of the existence of the maths society. The quality of the teaching was assessed by the university library to be high enough to be run in accordance with them and so improved the credibility of the maths society and henceforth increased the image of maths at Surrey. These drop in sessions would not have been possible without the IMA funding and support and so for that we, and 300 grateful students, thank you.
