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Show Normally a graduate student's thesis advisor will keep note of teaching and research openings around the country and try to secure offers for his students. Consequently, upon receiving his degree, Dr. Taylor was able to obtain a Benjamin Pierce Instructorship at Harvard. The instructorship, one of approximately eight, had a maximum tenure of three years, each year of which the instructor would teach two classes. One of these would be of his own choosing or - if, as often was the case, the class were not listed in the catalog - of his own making. Dr. Taylor taught at Harvard for a year and then, receiving an offer from Professor Don Tucker to take a position in the Department of Mathematics, and wanting along with his wife to be able to enjoy outdoor activities unobtainable to them in the Boston area, Dr. Taylor moved back to Salt Lake where he accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Utah. Dr. Taylor is now in his second year at the University. He teaches two classes: a three credit hour graduate course, covering topics in analysis, which meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:45 to 9:35 a.m., and a first year calculus class. The latter meets four days each week at 9:55 a.m. in the Naval Science Building, a convenient structure which serves more or less as a catch-all for the Math Department's overflow. It is the custom in that department to assign approximately a six to eight hour teaching load to its faculty members and to see that part of that load is an undergraduate class. Professors have their choice of assignments, with preference going to senior personnel. Dr. Taylor last year changed to the beginning course. He made the change because calculus is the first real college level mathematics which a student encounters in his studies and offers an interesting challenge to the instructor. In an analogous sense, real analysis is a foundation for and often a student's first taste of higher mathematics at the graduate level. Hence, it is a very popular course to teach, and students often form their interests concerning further work and research from their experiences in the analysis course. In the classroom Dr. Taylor often uses what he calls the * Texas or Moore method by which he attempts to create competition and independent thought among his students. He first became acquainted with the method informally in high school and later at LSU where it is used extensively. Although he tends primarily to lecture to undergraduates, while assigning them heavy weekly loads of problems, in smaller graduate seminars it is his jhabit to state theorems and have the students work out Lw proofs on their own to present in class. It is a situa-ion which demands constant attention to the problem hand, and Dr. Taylor sometimes finds that he has lit filter end of his cigarette while lecturing. Dr. Taylor (top) discusses integration with beginning calculus students. During the first of fall quarter they were ill at ease and responded reluctantly to his questioning but became more lively towards the end of the quarter. The sequence of pictures shows an average session in his graduate class, which has only five students. At the top he sits back and listens as one of them goes through a proof. From time to time he questions a statement (center) or goes to the board to point out an essential concept which has been missed (bottom). |