People
Linda Kilgariff
Instructor Emerita
Starting year at UNCG: 1971
Ending year at UNCG: 2009
Education
Degree(s): M.A. in Mathematics, UNCG (1971)
Brief Biography
From the College of Arts and Sciences News Letter Spring 2009
Linda Kilgariff has served on the UNCG faculty for 40 years and has compiled a remarkable record of contributions to the university. She received her BA (graduating Cum Laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa) from UNCG in 1968 and her MA in mathematics in 1971. She joined the UNCG faculty in 1971. Among the many courses in mathematics and statistics that she taught, are College Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus I, II, III, Probability, and Statistical Inference. It is estimated that during those 40 years Kilgariff taught more than 12,000 students. It was her custom to learn all of her students’ names, and this obviously contributed to her great popularity as a teacher. In addition to her teaching, Kilgariff served efficiently as administrative assistant to three department heads from 1986 to 2004. She earned both A and G certification in secondary education and put that to good use for many years as a UNCG Teaching Fellows mentor and as a student teacher supervisor in the area of mathematics. In addition, she spent 10 years working with the UNCG Fast Forward program in mathematics and served eight years as the departmental coordinator for the program. She served on four university committees including the University General Education Curriculum Committee and the Undergraduate Academic Policies and Regulations Committee. For the last three years of her career, Kilgariff was an iSchool mathematics coordinator and instructor in the Division of Continual Learning.
Contributed by Dr. Jerry Vaughan
The following is from the College of Arts and Sciences FRESHMEN SEMINARS PROGRAM SPRING SEMESTER 2005
Freshman Seminar 195-01 T, R 2:00-3:15pm, location: TBA. “Excursions in Mathematics.” Instructor: Linda Kilgariff. Department of Mathematical Sciences.
“To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.” Ivars Peterson, The Mathematical Tourist
Mathematics does not have to be dull and unrelated to our real world experiences. This course consists of brief excursions through selected unconventional topics from ancient through contemporary liberal arts mathematics. Along the way in this interdisciplinary mathematical adventure, the class will encounter fallacies and fuzzy sets; perfect, deficient, and abundant numbers; the double-dabble method; cryptology; wallpaper groups; the Greedy algorithm, …
Linda Kilgariff is an Instructor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, where she has taught calculus and various other mathematics courses for over 30 years. She mentors mathematics Teaching Fellows and high school Fast Forward teachers and loves beach music, murder mysteries, and infinite shopping.
