Teaching Circles

In Fall'99 two new faculty were hired in the Department of Mathematics of UNO. Neither are Americans, but they had had academic experience before arriving in Omaha. Right from the start, Dr. Griff Elder decided to help them to become involved members of the UNO community. And what a better platform for that than a teaching circle? So Dr. Elder arranged a meeting of the two new faculty, Dr. Valentin Matache and Dr. Andrzej Roslanowski, with Dr. Neal Grandgenett and Dr. Elliott Ostler of the Department of Education. A circle (or perhaps I should say a support group?) was created. The meetings of the circle were concentrated around two topics: why things on the campus are the way they are, and what can be done to make things better. If you think for a moment you realize that a person with a different cultural background may be somewhat lost in the complex American reality. After a semester of explaining, analyzing and planing, a semester of DOING started.

Dr. Matache was put in charge of organizing Math Awareness Week in April'2000. With a support and help of the other members of the circle, he organized a one day symposium with many talks by UNO students and faculty. That was a huge success! (See Dr. Matache's article in this newsletter).

Under Dr. Elder's inspiration and help, a seminar was set to study the incompleteness phenomenon. Complicated aspects of mathematical logic, satisfiability and provability were studied by a group of students under direction of Dr. Roslanowski in Spring '99. If you want to get a taste of the topic think about this: there are mathematical statements about which we can prove that they cannot be proved nor disproved.

Also in the same semester a presentation for students from Central High was organized. The topic was the mathematics of so called Polish Mathematical School, and the title was Invitation to Scottish Café. Some 10 students attended the meeting and - can you imagine? - two of them are now in Dr. Roslanowski's Calculus II class!

Dr. Elder arranged for a group of our students to be given an opportunity of actuarial internships and developed contacts with Omaha's actuaries. A number of other initiatives and activities were carried out.

I believe that there is no exaggeration in the claim that the teaching circle arranged by Dr. Elder was most active and successful among all teaching circles on the campus last year! An indirect justification of that claim was given by the fact that Dr. Elder was invited to give one of the three presentations on the activities of teaching circles on teaching circles kick-off in September'2000. And that was clearly the best presentation there!

The plans for the coming academic year are rich. The circle gained a new extremely valuable member, Judy Downey (see her article on Math Club in this newsletter!). The activities organized by the circle will be concentrated in the Spring semester, but many of them already started.

Imp O. Ster

(Editor's note: this is the nom de plume of an anonymous faculty member.)