Welcome to Math 302!

Greetings. I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce myself, the TA, and give you an overview of the course. I've posted a brief welcome letter introducing myself, my family and my research interests here. The TA for the course will be

Complex analysis is one of the advanced math courses that graduate programs love to see for several reasons. The first is the most obvious: the material learned here surfaces throughout mathematics, physics, engineering, .... The second is that advanced, high level classes such as this provide great training in writing proofs and analyzing difficult problems. We will move at a very rapid pace in this course. There is a lot of material, and only 12 weeks. Thus, proofs of many statements will be left as homework exercises. Click here for a more detailed explanation of my objectives for the course.

Many universities offer a year long course in complex analysis. I am always happy to give supplemental lectures or meet with you to discuss material outside of class; further, if there is something you want to learn let me know and I can see about working it into the main lectures.

As you can tell from the comments above, there is a lot of material for this course, both new material we will cover and old material you are expected to know. To get the most out of this course, you need to prepare for each lecture. This means spending two hours a day, every day, on the course. This ranges from skimming the material before class to working on the daily homework problems. I strongly urge you to work on the problems in small groups; however, everyone must hand in their own write-up.

If you are concerned as to whether or not this is the right class for you to take, please contact me and we can arrange a time to meet and chat.

Though I enjoy and encourage class participation, our class is somewhat large and that does affect how well I can get to know you in class. I hope you will swing by or meet me for lunch / dinner / snack at some point to introduce yourself and let me know why you are taking this class, what you hope to get out of it, and what topics (if possible) you would like to see. The more input and feedback you give, the more you will get out of the course. Additionally, if you think you will need a letter of recommendation, I can write a stronger, more detailed one if we discuss material outside of class. Remember office hours and review sessions are not just to go over material from class or homework problems (though obviously that is a major point of these), but also opportunities to explore the material in greater depth. If you are interested in trying a research project, let me know as I have some that are appropriate for multivariable calculus students.

Finally, if you have any concerns or suggestions for the course and would prefer to communicate them anonymously, you may email me by using the account mathephs@gmail.com  (the password is the first seven Fibonacci numbers, 11235813).

Looking forward to meeting you all.   //Steve

PS: My wife teaches at Boston College, 3 hours away. Thus for evening review sessions you'll often find my two children, Cam (he's almost 3 1/2) and Kayla (she's almost 1 1/2), the other TAs for the course (pictures will be updated in August).