Mathematics graduate students benefit from a structured program of training in modern methods of university-level mathematics teaching. New teaching assistants attend a four-day workshop that prepares them to teach recitation sections of introductory courses. The workshop emphasizes ways to involve students as active learners. After a year of leading recitation sections, teaching assistants attend a second workshop in preparation for teaching their own sections of precalculus and beginning calculus courses. In their first year of teaching their own classes, teaching assistants are given close supervision, and attend a weekly discussion group for new teachers. Later in their careers, graduate students are encouraged to participate in the university-wide Preparing the Professoriate program, in which the graduate student prepares, in collaboration with a mentor, to teach a more advanced course, and then teaches it under the mentor's supervision.

The Mathematics Department's calculus sequence for scientists and engineers, in which every teaching assistant participates at some point, has been strongly influenced by the national calculus reform movement. The text of Hughes-Hallett, Gleason, et. al., which emphasizes geometric and numerical understanding in addition to algebraic computation, is used. The symbolic computation program Maple is integrated into the sequence.

Industrial Applied Mathematics Program

The Industrial Applied Mathematics Program consists of joint research endeavors that pair members of the Mathematics Department with industrial and governmental partners. These projects develop participants' ability to communicate and interact with scientists and engineers. They also make a real contribution to the partners' missions.

Graduate students participate in almost all of the projects, usually making repeated visits to the partner institution, or spending a summer internship there. The students work closely with both scientists at the partner institution and Mathematics Department faculty. The Center for Research in Scientific Computation, (CRSC) director H. T. Banks says, "We don't send students, we take them. " In most cases students' work in the program develops into their Ph.D. thesis.

Students interested in the Industrial Applied Mathematics Program often begin by taking the two-semester sequence MA 573-574 (Mathematical and Experimental Modeling of Physical Processes), in which actual industrial and governmental problems are studied. More details can be found at http://www.NC State.edu/crsc/iamp.html