Mentor Program

To the Editors:

The American Mathematical Society has set up a program, nicknamed the Mentor Program, to try to “help advanced mathematics students maintain their mathematical interests, identity, and competence during enforced absence from the mathematical community.” Students wishing to enter the program, and mature mathematicians volunteering to serve as mentors, should write to the AMS, P.O. Box 6248, Providence, R.I. 02904. A special committee of the AMS tries to assign each student to a congenial mentor, and the rest is left to direct communication between them.

The program was conceived to help draft resisters in prison. (The Bureau of Prisons has promised full co-operation.) However, a much wider class of students are eligible and welcome to be helped; the most numerous and easiest to reach are those in military service!

Your readers may be interested in putting us in touch with any eligible students they know of, including resisters.

Readers in other academic fields may consider whether their own professional societies should take steps to maintain the community in spite of the present forced dispersal of many of its graduate students.

R. C. Buck

University of Wisconsin

Chandler Davis

University of Toronto

Jacob Feldman

University of California