Office hours and other useful information Following is information about when I am available and how you can contact me:

I am also available by appointment or when my door is open.

Text: Contemporary Abstract Algebra, fifth edition by Joseph Gallian. There will be some additional notes for the Galois Theory portion of the course.

World Wide Web: I will maintain a course homepage that will contain links to all course handouts for the course. The URL for this course is http://www.gac.edu/~karl/courses/mcs314/s05/ , which you may want to save as a bookmark in your web browser.

Reading schedule and coverage: We will first cover chapters 16-23 of Gallian, which deals with Ring and Field theory. After this, we will spend most of the remainder of the course on Galois theory, reading form the notes I will give you. You should check the schedule of the readings to find out what we will be covering in a given class period. I will expect you to read through the reading before coming to class. Please note that this schedule will be perpetually updated.

Homework: Following Barbara's practice, I will assign three types of homework exercises: practice problems, mastery problems, and exam problems. However, the practice problems will not be graded and will not figure directly into the course grade. Initially, I will not give due dates for the mastery problems, but will start to do so if people are not handing them in in a reasonable time-frame. I will adopt the convention of collecting mastery problems every Monday, and exam problems on their assigned due date.

I expect all written work that you submit to be clear, correct, neat, and in complete sentences. Mathematical exposition should be convincing and interesting, and I expect you to strive for these qualities in your work in this course.

Exams: We will have 2 or 3 exams exams. The first will cover chapters 15-18 (Rings) and the second will cover chapters 19-23 (Field Theory). I haven't decided whether we will have a test on Field theory; we might instead have presentations.

Determination of course grade: There will be five parts to the grade, each with an equal weight: mastery problems, exam problems, exam 1, exam 2, and either exam 3 or your presentation.

Honor: Students are encouraged to discuss the course, including issues raised by the assignments. However, you should write up the final solution on your own, and please acknowledge any substantive contribution to your solution by another person or taken from a publication; failure to do so is plagiarism and will necessitate disciplinary action. Also, I may designate certain assignments as "non-discussable".