Michael J Gilbert

Interests

Teaching

As I have progressed in my teaching, I have begun to become more and more interested in ways to get students actively engaged in the learning process. I have worked with colleagues at the University in developing the Math 196M course, which I have personally implemented. I have seen first hand the positive effects of getting students actively engaged and thinking critically about solving problems that require more than the standard mechanical mathematical operations. Additionally, I have become interested in experimenting with alternate grading criteria. I haven't gotten a chance to implement anything of the sort, but I recently read an article written by Cody Patterson, who used to work here at the University, in how alternate grading strategies can keep students who would otherwise feel alienated by mathematics engaged and interested in learning. At some point, I would like to explore this.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Gilbert, M. J. (2015). The fixed irreducible bridge ensemble for self-avoiding walks. Journal of Statistical Physics.
• Kennedy, T., Passon, S., Passon, S., Lawler, G. F., Gilbert, M., & Dyhr, B. (2011). The Self-avoiding Walk Spanning a Strip. Journal of Statistical Physics, 144(1), 1-22. doi:10.1007/s10955-011-0258-z
  More info

  We review the existence of the infinite length self-avoiding walk in the half plane and its relationship to bridges. We prove that this probability measure is also given by the limit as β→βc− of the probability measure on all finite length walks ω with the probability of ω proportional to β|ω| where |ω| is the number of steps in ω. (βc is the reciprocal of the connective constant.) The self-avoiding walk in a strip \(\{z : 0