About Our Department

Members of the department create, communicate, and apply mathematics of the highest caliber through activities such as internationally recognized research and graduate education, award winning undergraduate programs, and extensive outreach to local schools.

The department's faculty includes two Regents' Professors, three University Distinguished Professors, and numerous recipients of national and international awards. Over the last five years, a large percentage of the faculty has been awarded grants and contracts from external funding agencies, with total awards averaging about $5 million per year.

The department offers PhD, MS, and MA programs in Mathematics and Mathematics Education, and it provides major contributions to the Graduate Interdisciplinary Degree Programs in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. It also offers several unique post-doctoral opportunities for recent PhDs planning careers in research and education.

At the undergraduate level, the department provides more than 46,000 credit hours of instruction per year and offers its more than 500 majors unparalleled opportunities for research, tutoring experiences, and internships. The undergraduate, graduate, and GIDP programs have recently been recognized with two 5-year, $3.5 million VIGRE training grants from the National Science Foundation, a distinction very few programs in the country can match.

The department has a long and excellent tradition of outreach to schools in Tucson, ranging from programs supporting high school teachers to a research center focusing on improving the mathematics education of low-income Latino students.

Through the breadth and quality of its programs, the Department of Mathematics makes major contributions to the mission of the University of Arizona and to the quality of life in Tucson and beyond.

The central goal of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona is to provide intellectual leadership in the mathematical sciences that is of direct benefit to the state and its citizens and commands national and international respect for its depth of scholarship.

Department Mission Statement

Specifically our goals are:

• to communicate the beauty, utility, and excitement of mathematics and to be at the frontiers of new discoveries;
• to prime the pipeline pump and prepare a broad and ethnically diverse spectrum of entering students, enabling them to meet the challenges of University programs whose quality will continue to climb;
• to build a first-rate, enthusiastic and vigorous faculty blending youth and maturity in a variety of overlapping fields across the broad spectrum of mathematical sciences with the dual aims that each individual is internationally recognized for the depth and originality of his or her contributions and that the collaborations lead to an environment in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts;
• not to do all things, but to do well those things we do;
• to provide flexible yet solid undergraduate and graduate programs which challenge the intellect, cater to the diverse interests of our majors and which complement, particularly at the graduate level, our internationally recognized Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Mathematics;
• to encourage and foster creativity and scholarship in their broadest possible interpretations;
• to encourage students in the belief that they gain most from the university experience by developing self-discipline, self-reliance and, under appropriately supervised conditions, by giving full rein to their own creativity;
• to embrace the notion that change such as is manifested in computer technology and educational reform can be beneficial, enhance learning and enrich the intellectual environment;
• to be a resource in the mathematical sciences for other disciplines whose own activities have an ever-increasing need for the power of mathematics;
• to work closely, not only with colleagues from other disciplines within the University, but also with colleagues from the local schools and community colleges who share the responsibility of ensuring the flow of a mathematically literate and confident generation of new Students;
• to be part of a University which aspires to be the best and which pursues policies compatible with this goal.