About the Position

Status: Applications have closed for 2024. Stay tuned for next year.

Mentoring at Mathcamp is a hybrid between an instructor role and a camp counselor role. Both parts of the job are rewarding!

Teaching at Mathcamp

Canada/USA Mathcamp is a summer program for talented high school students from all over the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world. At Mathcamp, students interact with world-class mathematicians, explore advanced topics in mathematics, sharpen their problem-solving skills, and find a true intellectual peer group.

Photo of a Mathcamp mentor teaching

As a mentor at Mathcamp, you get an amazing teaching experience: there is no set curriculum, so you create your own classes and teach the math you're interested in. You get support (in both curriculum design and pedagogy) from experienced teachers, and your students are exceptionally smart and engaged. You'll be able to draw on this rich experience when you're making plans for life after grad school.

From group theory to projective geometry, from complex analysis to cryptography, from fractals to voting theory – there is an abundance of mathematics that can be taught (with a little imagination) at camp level. If you have a favorite topic of your own, or an innovative approach to one of the old standards (such as linear algebra), then it is a wonderful opportunity to put your ideas before a class full of students eager to learn.

“ It was really great working with this community of people who are unabashedly enthusiastic, sincere, goofy, and caring. Mathcamp is committed to changing and developing all the time, which makes it a great environment to grow as a teacher (and as more than that). The campers are fantastic—really fun, kind, curious people—and you get lots of time to talk to them about cool math (or not about math at all). So much of the design of virtual campus, the schedule, and events, kept a really human face to Mathcamp that I was skeptical of seeing online. ”
Katharine A., Mathcamp 2020 Mentor

Outside the Classroom

Mentors at Mathcamp have a unique role: besides being active teachers and counselors, they are the camp's primary leaders and organizers, and they help set the tone for the entire program. Beyond academics, mentors help to cultivate the rich life of the camp by planning activities, setting camp policy, and serving as residential counselors—essentially, running the camp.

Mathcamp mentors are encouraged to think of themselves as partners, not employees. We seek creative personalities to help bring the camp to life. Mentors must be willing to take responsibility and display immediate initiative when the situation demands it. At the same time, they must be good at communicating and working with others to achieve broader goals. Flexibility and tolerance for a certain degree of chaos are a must—that is part of what makes Mathcamp an exciting place to work!

Dates and Compensation

The staff dates for 2024 will be June 25 to August 9. (If you can only make it to most of that time, get in touch anyway! We can be flexible about short absences.)

Compensation for Mentors includes:

  • A summer stipend of $5,500
  • Transportation to/from camp (including ground transportation) up to $1000
  • Room and board for the duration of the program
  • An additional spring stipend of $550 recognizing the preparatory work in the months leading to camp
  • Reimbursement for any work-related expenses (e.g. visa fees, medical insurance)
We also cover professional development fees for external programs (such as First Aid/CPR/AED and Youth Mental Health First Aid courses), and provide internal professional development and training.