Message to Students about Fall 2020

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe!

You will notice that many of our Math courses have been designated as fully online for the coming Fall semester. These decisions were not made lightly but have been deemed necessary in order to best protect the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as their families during the current pandemic. Moving Math courses online also helps to free up TCU physical space that can then be utilized by other departments with more critical in-person components, such as laboratory sessions, so that they can be realized more safely and with necessary social distancing. I want to assure you, however, that the Department of Mathematics is prepared to deliver the same high-quality courses and the same individualized attention that we always have. All of our regularly-scheduled courses will be meeting live at their class times via Zoom, and our instructors have been training all summer in the best practices for online pedagogy. All instructors will be specially certified for synchronous “Hybrid Course” delivery, and we’ve even set up a special faculty discussion group to continue to learn from and assist each other in developing best practices for this new teaching style. In addition to live Zoom classroom sessions, faculty will continue to meet one-on-one with students via Zoom, our Math Clinic will continue to operate in an online drop-in basis, and even our Math Club and Gamma Iota Sigma chapters will continue to meet in real time.

We’ve all been deeply affected by the ongoing pandemic. I recognize that we would all like to be back in the classroom in person. But until the time arrives when that will be safe for all of us, please know that the Math Department faculty and staff are committed to continuing to deliver a top-notch TCU educational experience.

Dr. Greg Friedman, Chair, TCU Department of Mathematics