As stated by the AMS “The Notices is the world’s most widely read magazine aimed at professional mathematicians. … [it] is sent to the approximately 30,000 AMS members worldwide, one-third of whom reside outside the United States.”
Frank Morgan, new Editor-in-Chief of Notices of the AMS, has introduced the “Graduate Student Section” to Notices of the AMS. This section will include interviews with mathematicians, an improved version of the popular “What is …?” series, excerpts from the AMS Graduate Student Blog, and other sporadic articles. I will be conducting email interviews and working in other articles for the Graduate Student Section. The first issue of Notices under Frank’s tenure is available in http://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201601/. We have enhanced the website and added comment boxes. So feel free to take a look and add your comments!
During my five years of teaching experience as a teaching assistant including teaching, grading and math tutoring at Washington State University (WSU) and American University of Sharjah (AUS), I have noticed that many students are not motivated because they are scared of subjects that deal with mathematics, and because there is a common belief that math is a complicated and boring subject. When they go to any math class in general and freshmen and sophomore levels in particular, they already have a prejudice against the subject matter. One of my major obstacles as a teacher is to create a friendly environment. With patience and encouragement, I then proceed to build their self-confidence in learning mathematics. A successful math teacher must make the students feel that mathematics is learnable, applicable and enjoyable. The following is a list of two examples that I do in my Calculus II class to help my students overcome their fears from topics such as tests of convergence and divergence for series, and absolutely and conditionally convergent series: