The future Sheldon Coopers of America. Personal photo from 2014.
Historically, mathematicians never dealt with any students who were not legal adults. While now there has been an increase of math circles and (summer) math camps and math competitions (epsilon is greater than zero…), mathematicians working with and for those entities is NOT acknowledged in a meaningful way. Those activities, despite the significant amount of time they can take, are grouped under “service”: a miscellaneous category for anything that isn’t obviously teaching—specifically at your one and current employer—or research. These activities aren’t even preferred forms of service, deemed inferior to service to the department or the university.
You get more credit toward tenure volunteering to serve on a 10-person curriculum committee that spends 2 years identifying five new calculus textbooks than you do volunteering to spend two years worth of Saturdays leading middle-schoolers through non-traditional math activities.
We can do so much better.
