Mathematics at UMM

The mission of the Mathematics discipline is to advance knowledge of mathematics: by teaching mathematics and its processes, by research in mathematics and mathematical pedagogy, and by dissemination of this knowledge to students and the community we serve.

Whether interested in pure mathematics, applied mathematics, or mathematics education, students will find UMM's Mathematics Discipline offers excellent preparation for employment in a related field, graduate study, or teaching in junior or senior high school. Courses leading to Minnesota secondary education licensure are offered in mathematics.

Historically, the study of mathematics has been central to a liberal arts education. The mathematics curriculum serves as an integral part of students' active pursuit of a liberal arts education. The mathematics program serves students who major or minor in mathematics, seek secondary mathematics teaching licensure, major or minor in programs that require a mathematical background, or wish to fulfill components of a general education.

The mathematics curriculum is designed to help students develop competence in mathematical techniques and methods; to sharpen the students' mathematical intuition and abstract reasoning as well as their reasoning from numerical data; to encourage and stimulate the type of independent thinking required for research beyond the confines of the textbook; and to provide students with the basic knowledge and skills to make mathematical contributions to modern society. The program seeks to enable students to see and communicate how the development of mathematics has been part of the development of several civilizations and is intimately interwoven with the cultural and scientific development of these societies. The curriculum prepares students to enter graduate school, pursue careers in applied mathematics, or teach mathematics.

The Mathematics Discipline has seven full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty with a wide range of background and expertise. All mathematics faculty have years of teaching experience and at UMM, they teach all Math courses from the freshmen level to the senior level. In particular, faculty members with expertise in pure mathematics are able to offer advanced courses in Abstract Algebra , Combinatorics, Differential Geometry, Number Theory, Real & Complex Analysis, and Topology; while faculty members with expertise in applied mathematics are able to offer advanced courses in Partial Differential Equations, Mathematical Modeling, Optimization and Operations Research, Applications of Graph Theory, and Applied Numerical Analysis. In addition to being able to offer a plethora of advanced mathematics courses, with their diverse expertise, UMM's mathematics faculty are able to successfully involve their students in undergraduate research projects specifically in almost all of the aforementioned areas in mathematics.