Computer classroom instruction

Internships & Research


Cedar Rapids offers many opportunities for mathematics and computer science students to explore career opportunities through internships.  

Collins Aerospace, one of the world’s largest avionics companies, was founded in Cedar Rapids and offers many internship and job opportunities. Aegon is one of the world's leading financial services organizations, providing life insurance, pensions and asset management. Transamerica, Aegon's successful brand in North America, has its head office in Cedar Rapids.

In addition, many of our majors participate in summer research programs. Here are some recent participants in summer National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU):

  • Maranda Franke: Army Research Lab project at University of Iowa
  • Mike Huff: Los Alamos National Labs through Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory — The National Undergraduate Fellowship Program in Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy Sciences
  • Alec Herr: SURF at Georgia Tech
  • Jack Berkowitz: UCLA Neurophysics of Spacetime REU
  • Mike McConnell and Curtis Stochl: Math REU at University of Iowa
  • Matt D. Burch: University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

The Lindsay Seminar

“What I liked most was the fact that everything was on us. We weren't given answers if we got stuck. It wasn't like a class, it was more like a research environment."

- Past Participant

The Lindsay Seminar attempts to address the fact that students in high school and their first several college math courses are given a profoundly distorted view of mathematics because all of the material is presented as a finished product. 

The Lindsay Seminar gives some of the most promising entering students a chance to experience mathematics as a creative endeavor, where conjectures and verifications take the place of routine computations. The work is collaborative and discovery-based — rather than being shown how to work things out, you figure it out for yourself and explain your thinking to each other.

The Lindsay Seminar meets one evening a week through most of the fall term. Participants are selected based on a review of the records of incoming students, with very high standards (the ACT scores of the participants typically average over 30). If you would like to be considered, please contact Jon White to find out more.

The Lindsay Seminar has enjoyed the generous support of the Dean of the Faculty and eventually hopes to receive outside funding as well.


More opportunities

Many math and computer science majors at Coe participate in regional, national and international competitions and conferences.

  • Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest
  • Computer Science Education Conference (SIGCSE)
  • Annual Putnam Mathematical Competition
  • Iowa Section of the MAA's Collegiate Mathematics Competition
  • Midwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium (MUMS)
  • Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics (NCUWM)
  • Mathematical Contest in Modeling and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM)

We have a colloquia series where you can hear talks by professionals and academics on a variety of subjects. It also gives you an opportunity to present your own research to the rest of the student body.