Mathematics

Faculty
Issa Kagabo, Chair
Lisa Wetherall, assistant professor

Introduction
Sir Ferdinand: "You must take account of feelings, passions, emotions, intuitions, instincts, as well as quantities and figures and logic."

Secondborn (rising to the occasion eloquently): "And who dares say that mathematics and reason are not passions? Mathematical perception is the noblest of all the faculties!"
-George Bernard Shaw, Act IV, Buoyant Billions

Goals
Goals for the Mathematics Department may be divided into five categories:

A. For students who take a math course to fulfill the requirement for General Ed:
1. To develop mathematical power for all students: power to reason logically, to solve problems, and to communicate about and through mathematics.
2. To help students become mathematically literate so they can survive in a world that relies heavily on calculators and computers to carry out mathematical procedures.

B. For students to specialize in math: math majors and minors.
1. To develop mathematical power to explore, conjecture, and reason logically, to solve challenging problems, and to communicate about and through mathematics.
2. To help students see the connection between the various mathematics courses that are being offered and also see how mathematics is related to other intellectual activity.
3. To help students see the connection between mathematical ideas and its applications and be able to apply their knowledge of mathematics to solve problems related to other fields.

C. For Math Education majors
1. To develop mathematical power to explore, conjecture, and reason logically, to solve problems, and to communicate about and through mathematics.
2. To help students see the importance of following the NCTM Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics-both for curriculum and evaluation.
3. To train students to become more proficient in mathematics and become effective teachers who will not be afraid to make changes in the way mathematics is being taught in schools today-rote memorization to be replaced by logical reasoning and the lecture method to be supplemented with the discovery method.
4. To prepare students to be able to learn and teach in diverse cultural settings.

D. Math courses being taught as a service to other majors in other departments.
1. To prepare students for work in a world where applications of mathematics is becoming more crucial in many fields.

Affiliation With the University of Maryland
Students majoring in mathematics may also major in engineering through a dual-degree arrangement with the University of Maryland. For details of the arrangement see the engineering section of this bulletin.