Hello Math Majors,
I hope that you are continuing to do well this semester we draw nearer to the month of May and final exams. I know that this can be a high stress, high workload time of year, and please know you have resources to help at this time of year. I would be happy to make recommendations for resources or options if you do not know where to start.
Engagement Outside of Classes
As a student at UNL, you have many options for spending your time outside of classes and studying, and I would strongly recommend you to spend at least some of time engaging in meetings, activities, or events about opportunities available to you. What I am saying is you need to attend club/organization meetings, events about opportunities, or activities that development skills not found in classes. These are often completely optional things that you could spend your time on when you are not in class or studying, but these optional things could be the difference between achieving your academic, professional, and personal goals and not. I have been meaning to discuss this for a while now, but it seemed like I needed to write about more urgent things.
Over the past couple of semesters, I have attended multiple events and meetings discussing opportunities available to students, and I have been very disappointed about the attendance at these events and meetings. I know that this events or meetings are not mandatory, but choosing not to attend could mean missing out on an opportunity for an internships or job or on an application for a scholarship or a research program. I know that it is cliché, but you will missing 100% of the opportunities that you do not choose to investigate or partake in. This is why I was so disappointed with the attendance at the student meetings or events that I have attended. I have also noticed that the students who do choose to attend these meetings and events are often selected for significant opportunities and programs, and I want this to be more than just a handful of students.
If you have any questions about what I mean by the above, I would be happy to meet with you to discuss things that you might have missed out on through non-attendance.
Enrolling in Summer and Fall 2023 Classes
We are now in open registration for both the Summer 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters, so now is the time to enroll in classes unless you are graduating in May. Enrolling in classes is extremely important for a couple of reasons, and one of those reasons may not be something you have thought about.
First, you want to enroll as soon as possible as it gives you the best chance to enroll in the classes that you want and need along with having the schedule that you desire. There are occasions with a section of a course or the only section of a course that you need to complete your major and/or minor requirements will completely fill. This has only rarely happened with Math courses, and we have been able to work around it. However, it has happened more often with courses in other departments that you may need for your Math major option, and it has been challenging and often frustrating to work around these issues. I have also seen limited course options make choices for general education requirements difficult, and I have seen students having to make choices between courses that they do not have much interest in. I can help with this, but it would be better for you to enroll now and make changes later than for you not to enroll at all.
Second, academic departments are required to make decisions about which courses to keep and not keep for the upcoming semesters much earlier than you might expect. Requests to cancel courses with low enrollment for the Summer 2023 semester are already being received, and it is completely possible that a department will be required to cancel a course that you need in an upcoming semester. The only way to prevent courses from being canceled is to enroll in classes that you need or at least think you might need now. For example, I can tell you that the MATH 310 course for the Summer 2023 and many of the 400-level Math courses for the Fall 2023 semester have very low enrollment. It would be disappointing to be forced to cancel a course like MATH 430: Ordinary Differential Equations for the Fall 2023 semester when we know there are students who want to take the course.
For these reasons, I would strongly recommend that you enroll in Summer 2023 and Fall 2023 classes now even if you are not exactly sure which courses you want or need to take. You can always make changes to your Summer and/or Fall schedule up until the start of courses, and you will not need to pay for any courses that you drop before they start. However, if you cannot enroll due to a hold, you need to try to address that now!
Registration Holds
It is often impossible for me to lift a registration hold via email, and sometimes, I cannot lift a registration hold during a drop-in meeting. If you have a registration hold related to graduation planning, probation, or being in your first year, you need to schedule and attend a meeting with me to complete the required advising to have the registration hold lifted. To use your Priority Registration time or to enroll during open registration, you must not have any holds on your registration.
For the Spring 2023 semester, I am taking in-person, Zoom, and phone meetings in 45-minute blocks from 8:30 am to 12:15 pm and 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm every weekday outside of my drop-in advising hours, and I am taking drop-in meetings via Zoom only on Mondays and on Fridays from 1 pm to 3 pm.
You can schedule a meeting with me by using the Student Success Hub via this link, by calling the College of Arts and Sciences Academic and Career Advising Center at 402-472-4190, by calling me at 402-472-4319, or by emailing me at dpellatz@unl.edu. You can find instructions for how to access and schedule meetings in the Student Success Hub system here. You can also find information about my virtual only drop-in meetings at https://cas.unl.edu/drop-in-advising-schedule.
Best wishes, Doug
Math Department Events
The Math Department has many upcoming events that might be of interest to you along with a weekly (or almost weekly) colloquium series. A listing of all upcoming Math Department events can be found at https://events.unl.edu/math/upcoming/.
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