Sponsor Information

There are a number of benefits to the project sponsors. Foremost is the result of the investigations of the student team. While participating in a new approach to higher education in applied mathematics, the sponsor may obtain the solutions to problems that demand time or expertise not available from permanent staff. The AML has the considerable resources of mathematicians in a wide variety of mathematics and statistics, both pure and applied. In addition, university computing facilities are available for team use. The Albert S. Cook Library provides access to technical journals and the most advanced knowledge in mathematics and related fields. Professors in economics, business, computer and information sciences, chemistry and physics are available as consultants to the team. Sponsors also benefit by having contact with some of Towson University's brightest students as potential future employees. Additionally, there is significant public relations value in supporting higher education.

The AML expects that the solution to the problem and the investigation of the project is useful to the sponsor. It should not be critical to the organization, but neither should it be frivolous and unimportant. Further it is important to remember that the purpose of the AML is student education in mathematics. Potential sponsors should keep the following in mind:

• the exercise is to be an educational experience for the students
• the AML is not a professional consulting firm
• while our best students are selected, they are undergraduates and carry a full load of other courses while they are participating in the research project
• a mathematician approaches a problem by extracting the salient features, abstracting, making assumptions, sometimes generalizing and extending and may provide less of the exact, practical solution to the original problem, and more of the innovative approach in viewpoint or in technique to a larger, more general problem.

The University, through the AML, supplies an honest, intensive effort on the part of its best mathematical talent to study and fully report on the sponsor’s project. However, the AML does not contract to solve the sponsor’s problem, but to study it and to provide a professional report on the intensive investigation which may, but need not, lead to a complete solution.