The Mathematics Department is a part of the School of Mathematical Sciences as well as a member of the Faculty of Science. It has both teaching and research roles and carries the primary responsibility for undergraduate teaching in Mathematics in the University. Much of this year was taken up with digesting the many changes flowing from decisions made by the University in 1999. Overall the year was a successful but difficult one for the Department.
Undergraduate student numbers continued the strong growth of the previous year. Especially pleasing is the growth in numbers of students in our first and second year honours units - they are growing even more strongly than our overall numbers. We continue to attract a large number of National Undergraduate Scholars and Distinguished Scholars. Two students were awarded University Medals. The restructuring of our units to fit in with the new 8:8:8 structure has been well received by students. Some units were offered by videoconferencing with Monash and Sydney universities. The individual units went well despite the technical inadequacies of present facilities for teaching at this level. However overall there are a number of problems that make it unlikely that this method of teaching will be used extensively. Brian Davies' book "Exploring chaos: Theory and Experiment" has continued to receive critical acclaim - as well as several enthusiastic reviews, Choice (Current Reviews for Academic Libraries) will include the book in their annual Outstanding Academic Titles list, published in January 2001. This is a list of 600 books chosen from more that 25,000 titles in all academic disciplines and reviewed by them in the year 2000.
Throughout the year we continued our series of school visits (in collaboration with the University of Canberra) to promote the study of mathematics at the secondary level.
In addition, we have completed the groundwork for several new initiatives which will start next year. A new unit, Poetry of the Universe, will be offered jointly with Philosophy. The Department will receive support from the Vice-Chancellor's Plan for Growth to make an appointment in bioinformatics. This will, with the Centre for Bioinformation Science, promote the study of bioinformatics at the ANU. A major initiative is the establishment of a new degree in Computational Science. This recognises the increasingly important role of computational modelling in a wide range of applications and gives students the opportunity to combine depth in mathematics and computer science with the study of an area of application. This initiative is supported by the education program of APAC. The development of an honours school in mathematics as an SMS wide initiative made substantial progress. The research programs of the SMS will offer honours level courses and the SMS has provided funding for the offer of honours year scholarships from 2001. Postgraduate enrolments remain steady but low; honours graduates in mathematics are in high demand from employers and it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit postgraduate students in mathematics.
The heavy demands of maintaining our teaching program and adapting to all the changes of the previous year have made research time a precious commodity. The majority of staff have continued to pursue research vigorously and productively. Our output was maintained at a high level, as demonstrated by the number of publications and visitors to the Department and the number of visits by staff to collaborators in other universities. The grant support for mathematics in Australia is very low, with the ARC being the only external funding agency to support research in theoretical areas. We had no new large grants in 2000, but received a number of small grants. John Hutchinson has been awarded a large grant for 3 years from 2001 as well as a grant from the new Australian-German Joint Research Co-operation Scheme. Several members of staff were successful in obtaining small grants for 2001.
This year saw the retirement of the two longest serving members of the Department (Haralds Petersons and Martin Ward); they continue their association with the Department as Visiting Fellows. A mini-conference was held to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Bob Bryce. We welcomed back Steve Roberts from his secondment to ACSys. Steve has been one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the new Computational Science degree. We also welcomed the (long overdue) promotion of Rick Loy to Reader.
Maintaining our teaching program has placed considerable strains on the Department. The growth in student numbers together with an infusion of special funds will enable us to make new appointments in the coming year. New staff, growing students numbers and a number of new initiatives mean that we look forward to a year which will be difficult and full of challenges but also full of promise.
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