Mission & Vision

The Department of Mathematics strives for world-class excellence in core research, innovation in instruction in a time of evolving student needs, and engagement with strategic initiatives with our sister units to push the frontiers of science.

Our core mission:

• Build a nationally competitive graduate program that affords a world-class education, routinely placing graduates into top academic and industrial positions.
• Maintain vibrant research groups that produce impactful results, attract national recognition through awards and funding, run energetic seminars, and engage in vertically integrated mentoring of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates.
• Provide undergraduate programs that prepare students for both graduate study and the increasingly quantitative demands of the 21st century workforce by intertwining rigorous curriculum with research mentoring and internship opportunities.
• Provide secondary training opportunities for employees of local industries through certificate and masters programs that stimulate the development of quantitative skills.
• Push the research agenda of the university through collaborative engagement in interdepartmental initiatives by bringing deep mathematical ideas to bear upon the pressing scientific questions of our time.
• Develop innovative gateway curriculum that meets the evolving needs of the student body of MSU. Research, develop, and implement cutting edge pedagogical techniques through discipline based mathematics education research.

Mathematics plays an essential role in the advancement of science and is a fundamental mode of human thought. All members of the university community should strive to improve their quantitative and deductive capacity. The Department values constructive, professional discourse that gives all stakeholders an opportunity to express their views in a non-judgmental environment. We believe that only in a climate in which everyone is heard, can we arrive at decisions that benefit us all.