Czech university honors RU mathematics professor

RU professor of mathematics and statistics earns recognition from Czech university

Radford University's Wei-Chi Yang, professor of mathematics/statistics, was awarded the title “Professor Honoris Causa” by the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CULSP) in a ceremony in Prague.

Radford University's Wei-Chi Yang, professor of mathematics/statistics, was awarded the title “Professor Honoris Causa” by the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CULSP) in a ceremony in Prague on Monday, Oct.21.

Professor Honoris Causa (prof.h.c.) is an honorary title recognizing an outstanding scientific career and dedication to teaching within the recipient's field of study as well as contributions to the development of the recipient's discipline through research, publications, conferences and journals. Dr. Yang was nominated by Tomas Subrt, head of the CULSP department of systems engineering, for his "global scope and excellent scientific work and achievements."

Currently in Beijing, China on sabbatical, Yang recently visited the Institute of India in Bombay for a presentation titled "Discovering and exploring mathematics with evolving technological tools" and one titled "Higher dimensional mean value theorem and its applications" at the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the Beijing Normal University. He also keynoted the 17th Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics in Bangkok, Thailand. While in Asia, Yang will visit universities and conduct seminars for faculty and graduate students in China, Singapore, Japan and Korea.

"By discussions with faculty members and students from different countries, I will be able to share with colleagues and students at RU how and why they solve a problem this way here as opposed to another way," he said.  "I have already discovered some approaches that Chinese students would take when solving problems not used by students at RU and vice versa because of the different ways that mathematics is taught."

Radford University students benefit from Yang's international network and research. "My students will always get to know the most efficient way when solving problems and be made aware of some of the interesting real-life or cross disciplinary problems that can be linked to mathematics. Another thing they will appreciate is how they can integrate their thoughts and ideas into technological tools to either verify what they have been taught or make new conjectures."

Yang is passionate about how mathematics can be better taught and understood with visualization and other evolving technological tools. He is also dedicated to making the learning of mathematics less onerous.

"It is important that mathematics can be made Fun, Accessible, Challenging and Theoretical, or FACT," he said.  "This is contrary to the traditional way of how were taught - theory first - and then teachers lose kids and math becomes boring, I say let kids understand how math can be found everywhere."

Learn more about Radford University at www.radford.edu.

Oct 22, 2013
Don Bowman
(540) 831-7523
dbowman@radford.edu