Mar 21, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - The Claremont Colleges have formed a new joint venture—the Claremont Center for Mathematical Sciences (CCMS)—which will be led by Claremont Graduate University (CGU), and will include math professors and students at CGU, Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College, Scripps College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College and Keck Graduate Institute. The center becomes one of only a few similar centers in the nation, and one of three in California.

The Claremont Colleges, as a whole, have had much success in math, having won numerous awards and received many grants from prominent organizations such as the National Science Foundation, American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America. The goal of the new center is to promote new collaborative initiatives, utilizing the more than 300 math students and 50 math professors from the colleges. The mission statement on the center’s website states, “The CCMS aims to promote excellence in research and teaching in mathematics by combining the resources of the individual member colleges for the benefit of the extended mathematical community.”

Repeated studies have shown that the United States faces critical problems in mathematics: shortage of trained math teachers and reduced math understanding at the high school level, low representation of students of color in math and low numbers of U.S.-born math students in graduate school. The CCMS hopes to make an impact on the state of affairs in math by fostering:

• Improvement in regional math education
• Sponsored research projects, where corporations, government agencies and foundations bring their difficult problems to campus
• Research projects by math undergraduates from The Claremont Colleges
• Expanded research collaboration among the math faculty and the various users of math on and off campus, such as the expanding areas related to biological problems

Much of the center's work will be handled by the Claremont Colleges math faculty and undergraduate and graduate students. In this respect, this new math institute will be distinct from the six national math institutes established over the past 30 years, which are devoted to cutting-edge research and staffed by temporary visitors. After hiring a full-time director, the main focus of the CCMS will be to first tackle regional issues such as infrastructure, government and education.

Adapted from news release issued by Claremont Graduate University