Welcome and Contents

Welcome to the Summer Term edition of Connections – the last in its current form and delivered by the MSOR Network so please forgive us for a touch of nostalgia! Connections will continue to be published by the Higher Education Academy with the same academic editors but will have new contact details (see adjacent). Of course although the MSOR Network itself has now closed, discipline specific support continues to be delivered by the Higher Education Academy led by Mary McAlinden as outlined in her article. This is yet another stage in the evolution of discipline support and as with all evolutionary change will lead to new approaches. Many of the articles published in this edition have been written by individuals involved in delivering network activities and I would like to invoke editorial privilege and take this opportunity to thank all of them, and of course Joe Kyle. As someone new to HE with quite a poor experience of mathematics (‘O’ level – but only just!) which I have to confess I did gloss over in my interview, the enthusiastic support given to me was invaluable. Thank you all gentlemen, you may not have succeeded in convincing me of the beauty of maths, but it’s been a pleasure working with you. To conclude I would also like to thank our designer, Chantal Jackson, without whom Connections would not have been possible. In the words of the author Douglas Adams “so long and thanks for all the fish” Dagmar Waller Assistant Director