Mathematics and Computer Science First-Year Orientation Program

Friday, October 21, 2011

The Math and CS Orientation Program is a series of workshops for incoming math and computer science majors. First year students met weekly over lunch with faculty members and upper-class math majors for the first seven weeks of the semester.  The program gave new students a quick and informal introduction to each other and to other members of the department. 

In the first session, Dr. Natacha Fontes-Merz organized a problem-solving competition with prizes.  In the second session, upper-class Mathematics and Computer Science majors were invited to come and share their experiences with the first-years.  The third session was a presentation by upper-class majors on summer internship and research opportunities.  Finally, faculty from the department led a few sessions on interesting new topics in mathematics and computer science.  Those sessions are listed below:

Mathematical Modeling's First Problem
Dr. Carolyn Cuff

Computer Science can be fun….really!
Dr. John Bonomo

What does a mathematician do?
Dr. David Offner

This is Math?! An Introduction to Knots
Dr. Jeff Boerner