By exposing so many college-bound scholars to the BU campus and faculty, Cynthia Brossman says, the office better known as LERNet actually helps the University net talented undergraduates. What we've seen is a regular correlation between students attending our events and students enrolling at the University. That's an ancillary benefit of LERNet, of course. Its first purpose is to enrich the education of young people who've shown interest and aptitude in math and the sciences. Along with LERNet Director Robert Devaney, CAS mathematics professor, and faculty members from participating departments, Brossman coordinates several annual, semiannual, and periodic activities such as Math Field Days, Saturday science labs, and the Pathways Program for young women interested in science.
Necessity is the mother of the network.
Most of the events now coordinated through LERNet preceded LERNet itself, which nominally has existed for less than a year. The initial success and ensuing growth of those events, Brossman says, made a headquarters for their planning and oversight necessary. The first Math Field Day at BU took place in November of 1992. He recruited Brossman, then an administrative assistant at the Science and Mathematics Education Center, to help organize it. So many people attended the next year's Field Day that Brossman has scheduled two in each subsequent year.