General

We are a small and friendly department. The social center of the department is in the math lounge on the 9th floor of Hylan in room 901. The department provides crowd-funded coffee during the day. The espresso machine is maintained by Carl Mueller. You can email him to set up an account to use it.

There are three major parties in an academic year. At the beginning of the fall semester we have a welcome party and at the end of the fall semester we have a holiday party. There is also a party to celebrate the end of the year, which is the spring BBQ at the end of the spring semester. Danielle Fisher or the department chair will notify you of the time and location of these parties.

Finally, don’t miss the emails sent to the graduate student mailing list. You may get a tutoring opportunity, free pizza notification, or one of the free iMacs sometimes given away by the department. The University of Rochester Graduate Student Chapter of the AMS also has a discord group just for grad students. Ask someone in the department for an invite link. We organize outings and meetups through this group.

Graduate student seminar

The Graduate Student Seminar provides an opportunity for graduate students to share their work and mathematical interests. Our current graduate student seminar organizer is Siddharth Gurumurthy. You can email him if you would like to give a talk. New graduate students might discover a research interest by attending the seminar. Graduate students love free food, and as such we try to provide free pizza at seminars.

Support in the department

Don’t hesitate to ask questions to our department staff. For general problems or if you don’t know who should ask about something, try Kimberly Toal, the Graduate Studies Secretary. If you need a textbook for the course that you grade or TA for the semester, you can also borrow one from her office.

Danielle Fisher can help you with travel funding. Each student gets money to spend on conference travel expenses from our department each year. If you have support from your advisor or another source of funding, Danielle can also help with processing your reimbursements.

The department’s IT person is Hoss Firooznia. He will set up your department account and password so that you can use the department’s printer and access our server.

Life on campus

We suggest you visit this university website first to find information about health insurance, housing, and orientation.

There are three major dining places on campus, which are Douglass, Wilson Commons (The Pit), and Danforth. Danforth has a special deal (50% off) on Monday and Thursday. On every Tuesday, you can buy a cheap hamburger ($1 or $2 for each) by Wilson Blvd. outside Hutchison Hall.

This list has a lot of popular things to do in the Rochester area.