Mathematics Mini-courses for Students at the 2004 SACNAS Conference

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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.