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The
main activity of the Graduate Affairs Committee (GAC) this year was to
plan a transition course for those entering students with deficiencies
in their preparation. The course will be offered by Marius Junge in
Fall 2004 as a topics course, and we hope it will have its own number
in Fall 2005. The course comes key aspects of analysis and linear
algebra that some entering students do not understand or have not seen,
emphasizing the relations among these topics and their usefulness. Entering
students who should take this course will be advised into it. It is
expected to have 8-12 students each fall. Benefits include creating a
peer group for these students. Also taking this one course instead of
repeating multiple undergraduate courses will be more efficient for
these students. A side benefit is removing our graduate students from
our undergraduate courses. The
GAC also discussed the Alumni Visiting Committee visit and the report
of the committee. There were no conclusions. The graduate students on
the committee polled their peers concerning some of these issues, and
response was generally positive. The GAC did not feel the need to
further pursue the earlier reports on mentoring or time to degree. The
GAC was unwilling to discuss long-range planning. Respectfully, Douglas West Chair of the GAC
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