The Math Camp is organised annually at the beginning of the academic year. It offers a mathematical warm up to all first-year students to ease the transition between high school and university, and is divided into two independent weeks: a Boot Camp which serves as a refresher course on high school level mathematics and a Prep Camp which offers an introduction to concepts that students will be using throughout their bachelor studies.
The camp, an initiative of Bruno Teheux, Ivan Nourdin and Hugo Parlier from the Department of Mathematics (DMATH), welcomed 119 students this year. We spoke to two of them to learn about their experience.
Jordan Ain-Hadjar, who’s currently studying towards a Bachelor in Applied Information Technology degree at the University, said he instantly registered when he received an invitation from the University about the math camp. “It was for me the perfect occasion to gauge the level of difficulty in mathematics I should expect in my programme and to prepare myself accordingly,” he said.
Jordan is also happy with his overall learning experience at the Uni and said that he would recommend his peers to attend the math camp, adding, “It was an enriching experience. We got to interact with all the students and professors at an informal level and got to solve seemingly difficult problems in a fun way.”
Jordan Ain-Hadjar and Claudia Marichal
We also spoke to Claudia Marichal, a first year Bachelor in Mathematics student at the University. Claudia learned about the Math Camp on the University website. She says she appreciated the way the camp was presented, and the activities explained on the event page. “I knew what to expect, that it was a review of parts of what we had already seen in mathematics in high school and was designed to better prepare us before embarking on our higher studies,” she said.
On being asked what motivated her to participate, Claudia said she was certain that it would help her. She said, “Having finished high school in Belgium, a year earlier than the students in Luxembourg, I thought that if they had already seen concepts that I had not yet been able to learn, this was the perfect opportunity to learn them and therefore start at the same level as everyone else.”
Claudia says she really enjoyed the camp. “We started the first week with the Boot Camp. We were separated into small groups, which was easier for us, the teacher was closer to the students and could help each of us. We also got to know each other, which can help us a lot during the studies. Then the second week was called Prep Camp. Each subject was presented by a specialised teacher. Everything was more or less easy to understand. For the most part, the teachers knew our levels and took them into account. They explained everything very well and in detail.”
She adds that she would definitely recommend the camp to all students who want to do their bachelor’s in mathematics. “The Math Camp helped me a lot personally and I know that I would have had a harder time during the first weeks of the course if I had not participated.”