Submitted by Dr. Piotr Mikusinski
Professor/Chair
Department of Mathematics
University of Central Florida
Piotr Mikusinski has been appointed the Chair of Mathematics at UCF. He has been at UCF since 1985 and has served as an interim chair in 2000-2002 and 2006-2007. The department has three new Assistant Professors: Junho Lee (differential geometry), Brian Moore (numerical Analysis), and Jason Swanson (stochastic PDE’s). Maria Capursi (geometry) has joined the department as a lecturer. We thank four long time faculty members, Larry Andrews, Joby Anthony, Richard Caron, and Rene Rodriguez for their many years of service, and wish them well in their retirement.
The Department will host a Math Day for high school seniors in Orange and Seminole counties on November 10, 2007, to showcase the Department's multidisciplinary research opportunities, and to recruit talented local students to study mathematics at UCF. We will award two renewable $1000 scholarships to students who attend Math Day and enroll in our Mathematics undergraduate programs.
In an ongoing effort to improve the undergraduate mathematics curriculum, the Department plans to offer, jointly with the Department of Economics, a dual major in Mathematical Economics, in which students would earn both a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in Economics. We also plan to institute an accelerated B.S/M.S. Degree in Mathematics, which offers to outstanding students the opportunity to earn simultaneously a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mathematics in a five year time-frame.