Mission

HCSSiM is YP Math Foundation's intensive six-week residential program that trains high ability high-school students in the mathematical sciences and mentors undergraduate and graduate students in teaching, research, and career navigation. Our primary goal is to identify, invite, and prepare motivated high-school students to pursue mathematics and mathematical vocations. We seek:

• To enlist the support of the secondary school mathematics community in the identification of talented and highly motivated students.

• To engage participants actively in the processes of mathematical thought, emphasizing the methods of discovery, proof, and modeling (rather than merely accumulating results).

• To create an atmosphere in which the enterprise of sharing of insights, knowledge, and mathematical enthusiasm overshadow distinctions between teachers and students and competitiveness among students.

• To explore active, accessible, and applicable areas of mathematics—for example, graph theory, dynamical systems, knot theory, and cryptography.

• To provide varied role models of mathematical exposition and both guidance and encouragement for participants to develop their oral and written expository skills.

• To encourage students to experiment with the learning process, take an increasing role in shaping their own education, and to evaluate their own goals, tastes, and growth regularly.

• To encourage undergraduate and graduate junior staff to experiment with the teaching process.

• To increase participation in mathematical activities by underrepresented students, including women, ethnic minorities, and economically disadvantaged students.

• To introduce students to the larger mathematical community and to help them to an understanding of the joys and options it offers.

• To provide continuing support for our students and their teachers.