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SMS MSc Student Handbook 2019/20

4. Mission, Aims and Objectives


Queen Mary's Mission Statement

As detailed in its Strategic Aims, Queen Mary seeks "to teach its students to the very highest academic standards, drawing in creative and innovative ways on its research".

The QMUL Charter contains a list of expectations for both staff and students to help create a community which is mutually supportive and works to further knowledge creation and dissemination.


The aims of Taught Mathematics

  • To ensure that when you graduate you have the mathematical skills most likely to be useful to you and your employers. In particular these include: fluency and accuracy in elementary calculation; ability to reason clearly, critically and with rigour, both orally and in writing, within a mathematical context; and, within the areas that you study, a sense of how and where your mathematical knowledge can be applied.
  • To help you build up more general skills and sound habits. These include the ability to plan your work, to work independently and in groups, to explain your work to others, and to use computers and the internet effectively and responsibly
  • To deliver a set of taught modules in mathematics that forms a coherent whole at the appropriate levels for each year of a university degree. To challenge and encourage all students within a friendly, stimulating and responsive environment.
  • To exploit our research strength by designing modules that will be interesting and useful for the students but also reflect recent developments in the subject; and at the same time to build on those modules and procedures that we have found successful in the past.
  • To deliver sound assessments of your work in order to keep you informed of your progress during your studies and in order to reflect your overall achievements in your class of degree.

The Objectives of Taught Mathematics

  1. All graduates will be able to use deductive reasoning and manipulate precise concepts, definitions and notation, to postgraduate standard.
  2. All graduates will be able to approach a mathematically posed problem with confidence and technical dexterity, to postgraduate standard.
  3. All graduates in programmes that involve analysis of data will have acquired skills in data handling, quantitative statistical analysis, and the ability to synthesise results, to postgraduate standard.
  4. All graduates in interdisciplinary programmes will have developed both basic knowledge and understanding of the companion discipline, and appropriate mathematical expertise, to postgraduate standard.
  5. All graduates will possess appropriate computational skills, to postgraduate standard.
  6. All graduates will demonstrate an ability to write technical reports, to postgraduate standard.