Mathematics Mini-courses for Students at the 2004 SACNAS Conference

该项目包括两门数学迷你课程，作为将于2004年10月21日至24日在德克萨斯州奥斯汀举行的奇卡诺和美洲原住民科学促进协会（SACNAS） 2004年会议的强化数学活动小组的一部分。每门迷你课程将包括四节一小时的讲座，外加最多两小时的问题解决/讨论环节。每门课程将由两名教师进行：一位是在研究、指导和教学方面有着出色记录的知名数学家，另一位是在开展杰出研究和教学项目时表现出卓越指导能力的初级教师。迷你课程的主题是“编码理论”和“生物信息学中的数学方法”。每个迷你课程的目的是让大量少数民族学生（高级本科生和研究生）接触到应用或纯数学的主题，特别强调解决问题的不同方法，以及与其他数学领域或其他学科的联系。此外，我们的目标是在迷你课程中达到一个点，当有可能发展成研究生研究项目的开放性问题可以在上下文中陈述。这是为了鼓励学生继续读研究生，并通过让他们意识到，即使在这个阶段，他们也能够理解激励问题的来源，从而增强他们的信心。

This project includes two mathematics mini-courses to be part of an enhanced group of mathematics activities at the 2004 Conference of the Society for Advancement of Chicano and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) to be held on October 21-24, 2004 in Austin, Texas. Each mini-course will consist of four one-hour lectures plus up to two more hours of problem solving/discussion sessions. Each course will be conducted by two faculty members: an established mathematician with an excellent record of research,mentoring and teaching, and a junior faculty member who has demonstrated exceptional mentoring ability while carrying out an outstanding research and teaching program. The mini-course topics will be "Coding Theory" and "Mathematical Methods in Bioinformatics."The purpose of each mini-course is to expose a large number of minority students (advanced undergraduates and graduate students) to a topic in applied or pure mathematics with particular emphasis on diverse approaches to problems, and connections to other areas of mathematics or other disciplines. In addition, the aim is to reach a point in the mini-courses when open problems that have the potential to grow into graduate research projects can be stated in context. This is designed to encourage students to continue on to graduate school and boost their confidence by making them realize that, even at this stage, they are able to understandwhere the motivating questions come from.