Purpose and usage of this blog.
The Gustavus Department of Mathematics and Computer Science has established a so-called “blog” (or “web log”) in order to facilitate communication with (not just to) alumni and students. You can find the blog at http://mcs.blog.gustavus.edu
To post a new message to the blog (as opposed to a comment on an existing message), you need to login. Look for the “Login” link. This link is the entry to all features beyond reading and commenting, even if you already are logged in. The login window offers the option to register as a new user.
If you want to receive email notification when new material is posted to the blog, there is a feature for doing that. Look for the “Subscribe” link.The blog is divided into four categories. By default you will see entries from all four, mixed together in reverse chronological order. However, you can also zoom in on just one specific category. The categories are
- lives
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A place for alumni, faculty, and students to share news about their lives, such as births, marriages, jobs, moves, deaths, etc. This would also be a good place for memories about individuals, like the professor who you can’t forget because…,
- department news
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When we plan an event, hire someone, change our curriculum, publish something, or otherwise have news to report, we’ll put a note here. This will replace our previous “what’s new” web page.
- commentaries
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This is our “op-ed” area. Anyone connected to the department is welcome to write (alumni, students, faculty). We ask that you stick to topics with some relationship to math, computing, or the department. This could include social/political/legal issues (regulating the web, say), technical developments (e.g., the new features added to Java), or curricular concerns (were we crazy to eliminate the AI course?).
- connecting people
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Alumni seeking students, students seeking alumni, alumni seeking alumni. (Students seeking students shouldn’t need this blog.) We’re not talking about romance here; typical posts might be
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I’m looking into industry sector X. Anyone with experience willing to exchange email?
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I’m going to be in geographic area Y. Anyone interested in getting together for coffee?
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My company is looking for interns. Any current students interested?
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If you find an open blog inimical to this sort of networking, let us know. We’re looking into other options for helping alumni and students network, like a moderated email list, should this one prove unsuccesful.
Our intention is that alumni, students, and faculty will write entries. Random other people are encouraged to go elsewhere. As a technical matter, however, anyone can use the register and login options on the right side of the blog. If we find this becomes a problem, we will make changes. For more information, contact Max Hailperin
The WordPress blog software seems to do a pretty good job of not making email addresses visible for spammers to harvest. If you post a comment, however, the email address you list on the comment will be visible to registered users of the blog.
Thanks to Matt Klaber, class of 2007, Dan Oachs, class of 1997, Joe Lencioni, class of 2005, and Ryan Rud, class of 2006 for installing, configuring and maintaining the WordPress software used to run this blog.
