WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A DEGREE IN MATHEMATICS?

Virtually all areas of employment have a need for people trained in mathematics. The skills you develop as a math major at the College of Charleston can lead you to a great career in education, industry, research, business, health care, finance and the non-profit sector.

• A degree in math can prepare you for some of the best occupations available. Mathematicians and statisticians can find employment in nearly every government, business, industry and research setting. Mathematician, statistician, and actuary are always among the highest ranked careers in the Jobs Rated Almanac. This is because the salaries in these jobs are high, the working environments are attractive, and thinking about challenging problems is satisfying work. If you enjoy mathematics, then being a math major can lead to a rewarding career spending time doing what you love.


• A double major in mathematics can enhance your academic experience. Students in computer science, economics, physics and other quantitative disciplines can strengthen their degrees and enhance their career options by combining a second undergraduate degree in mathematics with their primary major.


• A degree in math can be helpful even if you pursue a non-mathematical career. People are justifiably impressed when you get a degree in mathematics. It shows that you can think rationally, analyze complicated situations and handle abstraction. These are rare and useful skills in any line of work. That’s why even law, business and medical schools consider a degree in math to be a positive attribute for an applicant.

A sample of positions currently held by former College of Charleston math majors:

• Professor of Mathematics, Dartmouth College
• Analyst, Booz-Allen-Hamilton
• Assistant Professor of Economics, University of North Carolina
• Chief Executive Officer, Automated Trading Desk
• Statistician, Environmental Protection Agency
• Math Teacher, James Island Charter High School
• Arnold Ross Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Ohio State University
• Defined Benefit Analyst, Standard Insurance Company

Active Learning Opportunities

Student research. Creating and mentoring independent student research opportunities is central to our educational mission. Through bachelor’s essays, independent studies, and summer research projects, our students are able to investigate an area of special interest in depth or support and assist faculty in their own research. Many of these opportunities are eligible for funding through the College’s competitive student research grant programs.

• Chaotic Dynamics in Perturbed Nonlinear Equations
• Comparison of Hospital Occupancy Patterns in American and English Hospitals
• Integrable Dynamics of Knotted Vortex Filaments
• New Measures of Risk in Financial Markets
• Nonstandard Methods in Kneser’s Theorem for Upper Banach Density
• Occurrence of Epidemics in Isolated and Interacting Populations
• p-adic Interpolation of the Fibonacci Sequence via
• Hypergeometric Functions
• Predator-Prey Systems with Differing Time Scales

Departmental Colloquium Series. A very active, well-attended colloquium series that includes external speakers, faculty research presentations, undergraduate presentations, occasional teaching
seminars, and talks specifically for students. In a typical year, the speakers include about a dozen scholars from other institutions. We have also recently hosted scholars from the Czech Republic, Brazil, Norway, Australia and other countries.

Some examples of recent presentations include:

• Structure Theory and Representations of Conformal Algebras
• Financial Derivatives in the Electricity Market
• Galois Module Structure of Non-abelian Extensions
• A Hydrodynamic Model for the Growth of Bacterial Colonies
• The Universality of Rank 6 Plücker Relations
• What’s Math Got to Do with High-Performance Nano-Composites?

Math tutors. We regularly hire students to serve as peer tutors for math classes, running supplemental instruction sections (recitations) for students, and working in our walk-in math lab. Our math tutors don’t just tell others how to learn, they show how to learn, serving as instructional role models.

Math Club. This active undergraduate club is committed to increasing and broadening the student body’s mathematical knowledge by sponsoring various enjoyable mental excursions. These include talks by faculty members, presentations of student research, screenings of feature films related to math, and informal student/faculty activities such as pizza parties and bowling nights.

College of Charleston Advantages

At College of Charleston, math majors get the best of both worlds. Majoring in mathematics at any institution is a good idea, but at College of Charleston, it is an especially wise choice. Unlike many institutions whose faculty focus on only one or the other, our math faculty excel at both teaching and research.

• Teaching is our top priority. All of our classes are small, so that students can receive personalized attention from some of the best teachers on campus. In fact, each year one teacher at the College is selected to receive the “Distinguished Teacher Award,” and this accolade went to math professors in 2003, 2004, and 2006. In addition to traditional classroom teaching, we involve students in innovative and interactive learning experiences like challenging group projects and our new, federally funded “mathematical dissection laboratory.”


• Our faculty are also recognized experts in a broad spectrum of cutting-edge mathematics research. For instance, the American Mathematical Society selects one mathematician each year to address the U.S. Congress, and in 2006, it was a College of Charleston professor conducting research in the mathematics of the Internet. Any course is enhanced when the professor has an advanced knowledge of the subject, but students benefit from this outside the classroom as well. Student projects engage undergraduates in real math research giving them experience and the opportunity to publish findings in professional journals even before graduation. Additionally, the international reputation of our department helps students get into graduate schools and garner top research opportunities.


• Students can personalize their academic experience to match their interests and career goals by choosing one of five tracks: actuarial mathematics, applied mathematics, discrete mathematics, pure mathematics, and secondary mathematics teacher preparation.

”I came to the math department two years ago and was immediately welcomed as a new math major. The summer after my freshman year I was given the opportunity to conduct research with a professor and a fellow student in an area of math that I hadn’t been much exposed to. Our paper is going to be published in the Proceedings of the AMS. I would never have had this valuable experience had it not been for the willingness of a professor to work with undergraduate students.”

Kathryn Pedings ’07