Ron Sandland to lead review of Mathematics at Flinders
Ron Sandland to lead review of Mathematics at Flinders
Tuesday, July 3, 2008
Flinders University is pleased to announce that Dr Ron Sandland, former Deputy Chief Executive of CSIRO and Chief of the CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics, is to lead the review into the repositioning of Flinders Mathematics.
Flinders University believes that mathematics is an essential component of a modern economy, underpins many essential disciplines and is an important life-skill. As such, it is vital to contribute to mathematics education and research, both through direct mathematics research and teaching and in its many other guises including biostatistics, epidemiology and econometrics.
Flinders is moving to reposition its mathematics and statistics teaching and research through this external review to focus on the needs and opportunities for mathematics and statistics graduates and industry. With mathematics such an integral part of engineering and computing courses, our teaching in this discipline will continue to have a prominent role at Flinders as the University positions itself to make a significant contribution to the 'new South Australian' economy.
The University is committed to retaining mathematics as an important part of its activities. As evidence of this, the University has recently approved a name change for the School at Flinders to explicitly highlight mathematics. The School is now the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics.
In 2007, senior mathematics staff were offered voluntary redundancy packages and five took up this offer, an outcome that now enables the University to review the future direction of the area. All of the retiring mathematics professors took up the offer of Emeritus appointments and most remain active within the School, supervising doctoral students and continuing to publish.
Flinders has a proud history of mathematics and statistics teaching and research, counting amongst its alumni, Professor Terence Tao, Australia's only Fields Medal winner, and Rodney Brooks, Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The University will continue to build on that tradition.
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