Why Math at Radford?

Why study mathematics and statistics at Radford University?

Surveys have repeatedly shown that professional mathematicians, statisticians, and other related professions rate very highly in job satisfaction. (Although to be fair, these studies would have been conducted by people with strong backgrounds in mathematics and statistics, and so their results could be biased.) A strong background in math and stats demonstrates to potential employers in any field that you have the skills to understand and complex problems. As large data sets are popping in up in more and more disciplines, the ability to distill patterns from sets is increasingly important. Plus, math majors have written dozens of episodes of The Simpsons.

All our math and stats classes at Radford are taught by faculty, not graduate students. Classes in the calculus sequence are capped at 25 students, and most our upper level math and stats classes are smaller, ensuring close interaction with our faculty members.

Many of our majors have the opportunity to develop these relationships with faculty members further through student research projects leading to journals articles or presentations at academic conferences. Our statistics majors also often have internships with companies in a variety of fields supervised by our faculty.

We're proud of our graduates' success, and for good reason. The list below shows some of the job titles held in 2017 by Radford graduates with a bachelor's degree in math between 2005 and 2015. They work at many school districts in Virginia and at companies including Eastman Chemical, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Shenandoah Life, New York Life, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Epic Systems Corporation. One graduate is a lecture at The Ohio State University, and another is an instructor at Virginia Tech after getting his Ph.D. in math there. Our alumni are in graduate programs at Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, Clemson, Georgia Tech, and here at Radford University. One is a singer; one is an artist; one is a pastor; one is a sportscaster! As you can see, our graduates tend to find satisfying, well-paying jobs in many areas, including some which do not use advanced mathematics.