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Vanderbilt code-breaking class finishes with Aug. 3 mystery
7/16/2009
10:45 am
A summer course in codes and code-breaking at Vanderbilt University will culminate on Aug. 3 with students fanning out across the campus to solve a series of mysteries. The course, Cryptography, is part of the Vanderbilt’s Master of Liberal Arts and Sciences program, a part-time graduate degree program designed for working professionals. “Sometimes this feels like a course in higher math and sometimes it feels like a history course about spies and skullduggery,” said Derek Bruff, a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and assistant director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching. “It’s really both, along with philosophy, military history and ethics,” he said. Students in the course have debated issues such as The Zimmerman Telegram, a coded message from Germany to Mexico urging the latter country to attack the United States. Determining the legitimacy of the message affected the timing of the entry of the United States into World War I. Students will end the course on Aug. 3 with a final class that will gather in 206 Buttrick Hall on the Vanderbilt campus, split into teams and compete to win a scavenger hunt put together by Ravenchase, a Richmond, Va., company. The clues will mostly be codes for the students to decipher. Media Contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu |
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