Howard M Thompson
Mathematics Department
402 Murchie Science Building
303 E. Kearsley Street
Flint, MI 48502-1950

hmthomps (at) umflint (dot) edu

Phone: 810-762-3293
Fax: 810-766-6880

Fall 2009 is my first term as an Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at UM-Flint. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended Stanton Elementary School, attended Castro Valley High School, attended UC Irvine as an undergraduate, went to graduate school in Berkeley, and moved to Michigan for a postdoctoral position in Ann Arbor. My first job after the post-doc was at Spring Arbor University. I moved here from there. I am an algebraic geometer and I am interested in algebra in general.

Consider a career in a math-related field. Do you notice a trend in this list of CareerCast.com's 10 best jobs you can get today?

Explore all your options and keep them open. Even if graduate school in the sciences isn't in your current plans, choose courses that will allow you to change your mind later. Also, consider going to a Research Experience for Undergraduates Summer Program. It is important to note that many REUs provide a stipend. Here is a list of some math REUs.

Teach to learn. That is to say, take every opportunity to explain the things you are learning to others. Tutoring benefits the tutor as much or more than it benefits the student. Take a look at these students!

Seek a deeper understanding. For example, it would be nice if you were mindful about the nature of the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching. I suggest you start by reading this article by Ball, Hill & Bass. More generally, consider reading the more accessible papers of Deborah Loewberg Ball and the book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States by Liping Ma.

Take a look at The Story of Maths. According to Wikipedia, "the Story of Maths is the title of a television series outlining aspects of the history of mathematics. The series was a co-production between the Open University and the BBC and aired in October 2008 on BBC Four. The material was written and presented by Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy."

Curriculum Vitae     Research Statement     Teaching Statement

Papers

[1] Karen E. Smith and Howard M Thompson, Irrelevant exceptional divisors for curves on a smooth surface, Algebra, geometry and their interactions, Contemp. Math., vol. 448, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2007, pp. 245–254. MR MR2389246      Preprint
[2] Howard M Thompson, On toric log schemes, Ph. D. dissertation, 2002.     PDF (824 K)     gzipped DVI (86 K)     gzipped postscript (201 K)
[3] Howard M Thompson, Toric singularities revisited, J. Algebra 299 (2006), no. 2, 503–534. MR MR2228325 (2007b:14113)     Journal of Algebra    Preprint

Preprints

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