Undergraduate Program, 2026

It has been another busy year for our undergraduate mathematics programs, with many exciting changes on the horizon. This year, our Undergraduate Program Committee is leading teams of faculty members in a review of all four of our majors – Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Analytics and Operations Research, and Scientific Computation – with a view towards modernizing and improving what our current programs offer. The intent is to both add breadth to our current course offering, and to add support to mathematics students in the form of discussions across all of our classes. Stay tuned for the next letter from the Undergraduate Program Vice Chair to find out more as these ideas take shape!

Meanwhile, we have awarded degrees to 213 undergraduates over the past year: 

• 103 degrees in Applied Math,
• 76 degrees in Math,
• 21 degrees in Analytics and Operations Research, and
• 13 degrees in Scientific Computation. 

In addition, 24 of our undergraduate students have received Departmental citations and scholarships!

I am also happy to report that our Department continues to support our students with a wealth of exciting opportunities which enhance students’ mathematical journeys and college experience. Read on for more about some of our most popular and impactful activities below.

Fostering More Robust Research

In a response to the ever growing demand for research opportunities among our mathematics majors, this spring Professor Junxian Li is organizing the all new Davis Math Lab, which is modeled upon the many math labs for undergraduates that are flourishing in the US, Canada, and Europe. Groups of undergraduate students will be working on research problems proposed by a faculty member, aided by a graduate student, and will present their work at the end of the quarter in a poster session open to everyone in the Department. For this pilot of the lab, which we hope will grow and become a staple in our students’ math major experiences, we have fifteen projects led by thirteen faculty members. Students will gain experience in mathematics research which is unlike the experience of learning mathematics in a class, learn to communicate their research findings and, of course, have fun and make new friends in math. Find out more at the Davis Math Lab website.

As the pilot for the Math Lab takes off, we also celebrated those UC Davis undergraduates who have already participated in math research at our Undergraduate Research Conference this winter. The conference was organized by our Undergraduate Research Coordinator, Professor Albert Fannjiang, aided by our advising staff, Dawn Chandler and Marji LeGrand. It kicked off with faculty presentations featuring the various benefits of getting into research as an undergraduate, as well as how to get involved in mathematics research at UC Davis. This was followed by talks by ten UC Davis undergraduates – Alex Dong, Christopher Luevano, Siddharth Mani, Stella Liang, Tyler Valenti, Nathan Singh, Jenny Qi, Lucas Lam, Alan Bucker, and Francisco Chen – on their recent research. The conference ended with a panel on undergraduate research consisting of faculty and graduate students Noah Wiesner and Timothy Blanton, both of whom were undergraduates at UC Davis.

Read more on recent undergraduate research in this quarter's feature.

Directed Reading Program

Our Directed Reading Program (DRP) is thriving with the help of our wonderful graduate student mentors. Undergraduate students apply to work with graduate students who mentor them in reading a book or paper in a mathematics topic not typically covered in our regular classes. The program gives students an opportunity to develop their mathematical maturity, learn new math, and receive one-on-one mentoring from a graduate student, both in mathematics and in navigating the math major journey. Wyatt Grace, a junior in math, says “DRP has overall helped me grow significantly in mathematics. An emphasis on independent thinking forces you to develop new skills not derived from a standard curriculum, and having an interest in the topic at hand makes you intrigued in each reading and meeting you have.” Oscar Zhou, a sophomore studying math, adds “For me, DRP overall is pretty good, and can be relevant to the content in class. I participated in DRP while studying 150 series, and chose a book called ‘Elementary Number Theory, Group Theory, and Ramanujan Graphs’ as my reading material. A large part of this book is about groups and rings, which are the main content of 150A and B. Therefore, I would like to say that DRP and some advanced mathematics courses complement each other.” Wyatt and Oscar were two of 27 students who participated this Fall.

Special Topics Courses

This year we offered several exciting special topics courses for undergraduates. In the Winter, Professor Javier Arsuaga taught a course on Machine Learning, and in the Spring Professor Joel Hass will teach a class on the Mathematical Theory of Knots, while Professor Tim Lewis will teach a course on Mathematical Modeling. These courses give students a glimpse into mathematics outside our usual course offering and highlight the kinds of mathematics being researched within our Department.

Math Outreach

Math Club continues to bring together our mathematics majors both through fun events involving games, puzzles, and movies, and through informative sessions on everything from LaTeX to graduate school. This year Math Club has also continued to offer weekly free tutoring in upper division math to our students.

In a continued effort to encourage student communication with faculty, Department staff has also organized several fun and informative events which bring students and faculty together in a more social setting and offer students opportunities to ask questions about courses, research, graduate school, and more. Our Undergraduate Fall Welcome featured a trivia night in which student teams went head to head against teams of math instructors. And students gathered with faculty advisors in several Coffee with a Prof events.

Our student chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) encourages and supports women, girls, and otherwise underrepresented minorities to study mathematics and pursue careers in math. The chapter regularly hosts networking, professional development, community building, and outreach activities. It is open to everyone: all gender identities, and to faculty, researchers, and non-math majors, as well as to undergraduate and graduate math students.

Student Preparedness for College Mathematics

A report on issues around math preparedness among incoming UCSD students grabbed the attention of many around the country, when it was released in November by a UCSD admissions workgroup. At UC Davis, the problems outlined in this report were all too familiar, as our Department tackles the problem of educating an increasing body of students who enter our university and struggle to succeed in Calculus and, indeed, Precalculus. This problem will not be solved overnight, but we are attacking it from several directions. 

This year we used a proctoring program for our online Math Readiness Assessment (MRA), formerly known as the Math Placement Test, after a data analysis comparing how students did on the placement test to how they did on a diagnostic test offered on the first day of class showed no correlation between the two. Preliminary data about the proctoring is encouraging, with roughly 12% fewer students placing into every level of beginning calculus and precalculus than last year. A finer analysis of the data, comparing students’ MRA scores to how they did on the in-class diagnostic, is in progress. Our hope is ultimately to place students into the level of mathematics that will optimize their chances at learning calculus adequately enough to succeed in their majors.

Another aspect of tackling this issue is updating the curriculum of our current precalculus course offering. Supported by Provost Mary Croughan, a team of our instructors is currently working hard to address this. 

Finally, our Department will host a Summit of Chairs and Vice Chairs this Spring, bringing together chairs and undergraduate vice chairs from all of the UC’s to discuss this and other issues that are uniform across the UC system, in the hope of unifying our efforts and sharing ideas and strategies.

As you can see, members from every corner of our Department have been working hard to enrich and enhance our Mathematics programs. I would like to thank our enthusiastic undergraduate student leaders who have organized events and supported their fellow Mathematics majors, as well as our peer advisors who have worked hard to make students feel welcome and at ease when coming to seek help from our advisors. I am also deeply grateful to graduate students and faculty who have contributed so much to our students’ mathematical experience, both inside and outside of class. As always, a huge thank you to Dawn Chandler, Marji LeGrand, and Tina Denena – our fearless staff whose support makes it all possible.