Math Department To Update Facilities

While science departments across the University vie for state-of-the-art laboratory spaces and new equipment, renovations to the mathematics common room on the fourth floor of the Science Center will give Harvard’s math department increased access to a very different kind of technology come October: blackboards.

The renovated common room will be outfitted with overhead LCD projectors and four large blackboards—improvements that Irene Minder, director of administration and finance for the department, said will allow multiple groups of students and faculty to use the space at the same time.

“It’s more like mathematicians work together really. I’d like to have that kind of atmosphere for my students,” added Mathematics Professor Robin Gottlieb.

The renovation also calls for updating the common room kitchen and rearranging shelving in the third floor mathematics library. Students will be able to use their laptops in the library for the first time—a convenience that was previously prohibited due to a shortage of power outlets.

The Math Department—which has permanent offices on the second through fifth floors of the Science Center—has traditionally used the space at the end of their fourth floor hallway as a site for office hours, meetings, and social gatherings.

But growth in the department, which enrolls nearly 3,000 students per school year, and the desire for larger, more collaborative study spaces prompted discussion of how to revamp the common room and library, according to Minder.

“Students are our main priority and they needed space,” she said.

More space has come at a cost—three offices were demolished to accommodate the renovation—but even those professors who were displaced are content with the change. Mathematics Preceptor Oliver R. Knill, whose office was moved down the hall, said changing his furniture has actually given him more room.

Construction began this summer and was scheduled to finish in time for a department welcome celebration this Friday. Finishing touches and furniture have yet to be added, however. Although the event will occur as planned, the common room will not be officially completed until Oct. 1, assuming work continues on schedule, Minder said.

Staff members accommodated the construction during the summer, but delays have limited access to the space since the school year began.

“[It would have been] nice if they had finished over the summer,” said Math Teaching Fellow Matthew J. Woolf, adding that he and other graduate students “are somewhat skeptical” that the work will finish by the new completion date.

But overall, Woolf thinks the new space will be an asset to the department.

“It’s really not the same to go to 309 or 309a and sit in those small desks,” Gottlieb said of the classrooms frequently used for math work sessions. “Blackboards are like the lab of math. So there will be more lab space, and I think that’s a good thing.”

—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.