Boocher Leads Other Math Students to Explore Research

If you are like math honors student, Adam Boocher, Williams College may be one of the most famous schools you have never heard of.

Boocher had to look up this private, 2,000-student college in eastern Massachusetts to find out that it has produced the most Rhodes Scholars - 37 - of any liberal arts college in America.

“Williams in located in a small town in the middle of nowhere, but it was beautiful,” he said. “I found it has one of the best departments for teaching math in the country.”

Boocher was pleasantly surprised by his summer research experience Williams College and is eager to spread the word to other students about its excellence in math education. Lately, Boocher has found himself in a similar role of talking up math itself and trying to dispel the misconceptions that many students harbor.

He and his advisor, Professor Claudia Polini, were discussing this state of affairs one day late in the spring semester when they hit upon the idea of holding a symposium on undergraduate research in mathemathics.  “Many students see their professors as teachers, but are unaware of the math research which comprises a large part of their job,” Boocher said.

“A lot of students think that math is about being an actuary or pursuing a career in crunching numbers,” he said. “We hoped to give people a fresh view of math.”

Boocher coordinated the event, “Undergraduate Work in Mathematics: (What I Did for my Summer Vacation) on a Sunday in September in Hayes-Healy Hall with support from his advisor and sponsorship from the mathematics department. The event began with a panel discussion on mathematics research. Some described research in mathematics as solving a problem no one has solved  before. “Professor Frank Connolly eloquently likened the process of studying mathematics to building a cathedral – each mathematician adding his or her contribution to the project,” Boocher said.

Later, eight students spoke about their undergraduate research projects, and talked about their results. The event attracted 40 undergraduates, most of them freshmen and sophomores.

“A math student might think, ‘How can I ever prove something that has never been done before?’” Boocher said, “But this conference showed many students that it can be done.  All of the undergraduate speakers had gone to programs in which they had very little background, and in 7 or 8 weeks, had new theorems of their own.”

His experience at Williams College only strengthened his conviction that math is far more accessible than most students believe.  “There were five of us in our group and at the beginning of the summer our advisor gave us a problem she had been trying to solve for the last several years.  The toughest part was coming up with our own ideas to solve a problem. But each day we would meet in the classroom and go to the board to try to crack the problem,” he said.

The camaraderie between the five grew even after three students decided to try another tact, while Boocher and a fellow student remained with their original strategy. At the end of the summer, they had made serious headway into solving the problem.

“When we mixed our two solutions together we found that we understood the problem a lot better,” he said.

Boocher enjoys the challenge of math at Notre Dame. He said, “we have a lot of good faculty who are also wonderful teachers.”

It is because math faculty members have the reputation of being so approachable and helpful that Boocher turned down his invitation to Harvard University as a high school senior and chose Notre Dame instead. Four years after Boocher made his carefully-made decision to attend Notre Dame, the time is now right for him to apply to the top graduate schools in the country – confident that he set a course back in high school that suited him perfectly.