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2025 Newsletter

A message from our Department Head, Dr. John Harding:

Another semester has started and is off to a pretty smooth, if busy, start.

There were a number of transitions this fall and early spring. Former faculty Dick Bagby and Don Johnson passed away. Our faculty Robert Smits resigned to take a position at U. Alabama where his wife Tiziana is located; Tony Wang retired this January after 30+ years here; and Ernie Barany announced he will retire in the summer after many years.

Over the summer, the Dean approved one TT search in Statistics, and with the retirement of Tony Wang, this search was expanded to allow the possibility of hiring 2 candidates. School started on Jan 21, and we already had 6 candidates in for interviews and hope to be putting out offers soon. The snowstorm across the eastern US made this a very interesting hiring process. We are currently searching for 1 CT position. If we fill both of these TT positions and the CT position we will be at 17 TT faculty, 8.5 CT faculty, 4 postdocs, several visitors, and about 36 grad students. We badly need several more TT faculty and hope the admin will realize this. It was a big struggle to get the 2 TT spots we are trying to fill now.

The department is generally in good shape, with some plusses and minuses. Student credit hours on main campus are up a bit, but mostly stable. Global is growing. The chart below shows our preliminary spring Global student credit hours for each of the past 4 spring semesters. This growth is projected to continue for the near future. Our graduate program is in good shape with our student size up a bit despite the various visa challenges. The university is moving towards paid tuition for all Graduate Assistants, which is long overdue. Our biggest challenge remains the number of majors, which remains flat and at too low a level. We have a new undergraduate degree through Global starting in the fall as well as an agreement with U. Chihuahua that may help with this.

Still no movement on space and the closure of Walden Hall. Due to internal needs for space, we have now discontinued tutoring that was held in small conference rooms before.

About the Department

The department offers courses in mathematics and statistics leading to the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degree. At the Bachelor’s level we have several options for career preparation, such as applied mathematics and actuarial science.

Our faculty has research groups in many areas of pure and applied mathematics, and in mathematics education. Strengths lie in commutative algebra, logic and foundations, probability and statistics, dynamical systems, mathematical biology, variational methods in partial differential equations especially relevant to materials science, and applied and computational harmonic analysis with applications to machine learning and data analysis.

We provide courses for other disciplines throughout the NMSU main campus. This includes the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, agriculture, business, and education. This includes preparatory and general education courses that ensure every student has the quantitative and reasoning skills needed every career now demands.

The department’s mission is to provide core education in mathematics and statistics that prepares graduate and undergraduate students to be knowledgeable and responsible citizens of the world.

Our Math Tutoring Center is closed indefinitely.

New Mexico State University

Department of Mathematical Sciences

Department of Mathematical Sciences

Department of Mathematical Sciences

Welcome to the Department of Mathematical Sciences

News

A message from our Department Head, Dr. John Harding:

About the Department

Department of Mathematical Sciences

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