 Campus News
and Notes
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Table of
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East
Central University
Submitted by Ray Hamlett
Robert
Ferdinand has been recommended for
tenure by the tenured members of the department faculty.
Linda
Braddy, Mike
Duggan, and Anne Fine are in the second and final
year of their NSF research grant to determine the effectiveness of the
software ALEKS in the teaching of Intermediate Algebra. Linda gave a preliminary report on their
findings at the January meeting in Phoenix. She has also
received an ECU research grant to study the effectiveness of using ALEKS to
teach College Algebra. Results of this study should be available next
year. ECU is looking forward to
hosting the Oklahoma-Arkansas MAA Section meeting next year.
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Henderson
University
Submitted by William
Durand
This has been a very busy year
for the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Henderson
State University. With statewide budget cuts that seem to recur
every two months made it difficult for the faculty in numerous ways. However, in spite of the cuts, the faculty
remained involved in regional, state and local activities promoting
mathematics.
Several changes have been made
in the degree programs offered by the department. The Middle School Math/Science Licensure
program received an overhaul. Teachers
in the program will take a total of twenty hours of mathematics as well as
several science courses. This program
follows guidelines set by the Arkansas Department of Education and by
national organizations in the preparation of middle school mathematics
teachers. Elaine S. Durand, who
was awarded the Oklahoma-Arkansas outstanding elementary mathematics teacher
as well as the Presidential Award winner for Arkansas
in 1999, was honored by the Mathematics Department with an endowed
scholarship in her name. This
scholarship will be awarded to an outstanding junior or senior middle school
mathematics student in our program.
The Department now has 5 endowed scholarships in addition to the three
or four Departmental scholarships awarded each year.
The Department is developing a
capstone mathematics class for all mathematics degree students. Students in this course will, under the
direction of a faculty member, complete a research project and present the
results at a department colloquium and/or an appropriate conference. Additionally, the student will be required
to take a departmentally designated exit exam. This will add an additional 3 hours to each
of the mathematics degree programs offered.
The BS degree with licensure to teach mathematics has added an
additional 6 hours of mathematics to the program. To make room for these additions, the
University approved the secondary education component as a minor for these
students. The secondary mathematics
education program received a positive recommendation from NCTM and NCATE for
continued accreditation. The BS degree
in mathematics has also added an additional 6 hours to the degree
program. A BS degree in applied
mathematics is now being offered by the department. This program, while it is just beginning,
has developed some interest from several students.
Fred Worth has been
elected to serve as the HSU Faculty Senate President for 2004. He has presented several workshops for home
school conventions with three additional workshops to be presented this
year. Worth has authored a collection
of Excel worksheets for use as a supplement for Mathematics: A Practical Odyssey
(5e) by Johnson and Mowry, Books-Cole Publishing
Company. Fred has organized the Eta Sigma Alpha Homeschool
Honor Society for Arkansas.
Michael Lloyd has been
selected to be a reader for the AP-Statistics exam for the past two years.
Debra Coventry attended
one of the MAA workshops on training secondary mathematics teachers. This workshop was held in New
York.
Carolyn Eoff
continues as the sponsor of the HSU Student Mathematics Club. She also works with the students who take
the Putnam exam each year.
Additionally, this past year she served as the faculty representative
to the Board of Trustees.
Duane Jackson, Cindy
Wilson, and William Durand presented workshops
at the Arkansas Conference on Teaching held in conjunction with the Arkansas
Education Association and the Arkansas Council of Teachers of Mathematics
annual meeting.
Cindy Wilson completed the
training for the Math Recovery program and is currently working with a
student from Perritt
Elementary School in Arkadelphia.
At the HSU Homecoming in
October, David Gardner and William Durand were honored with the “H”
Award by the HSU Alumni Association for meritorious service to the
University.
William Durand presented a
workshop at the Central Regional NCTM Conference in Indianapolis
this past year. (Elaine Durand also
presented a workshop at this conference).
This past summer, William attended a one-week workshop on Geometer
Sketchpad in Oakland, California. He also completed his sixth year as an
AP-Calculus Reader.
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Hendrix
College
Submitted by David
Sutherland
Bob Eslinger
will retire at the end of this academic year and spent fall semester on
sabbatical.
David Sutherland is now
Associate Provost for Academic Affairs but continues to teach for the
department.
Several of our students
presented papers at various regional meetings this past summer. Peter Horn and Dylan
Burton presented at MathFest at the University
of Colorado in Boulder. MathFest is part
of the Mathematics Summer Meeting of the MAA and Pi Mu
Epsilon. Peter also presented a paper
at the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at
Texas A&M. Jed Dailey participated
in the Associated Colleges of the South Software Engineering Internship at Southwestern
University in Georgetown
Texas.
Geri Headrick
presented a paper as part of a Research Internship at Acxiom
Corporation here in Conway. Billy Autrey
and Kyle Rimkus completed projects as
well. Bill’s research project involved
aircraft wing corrosion. Kyle’s work
involved a Robotics Course for his Course Development Project.
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Northeastern State
University
Submitted by Joan E.
Bell
We are pleased to have one new
faculty member. Rad Alrifai earned a Ph.D. from Illinois Institute of
Technology and comes to NSU from Roosevelt
University in Illinois.
He is replacing Mike Bolton, who retired last spring.
We are currently in the 3rd
year of an NSF funded grant of $797,727 for the Mathematics and Science
Teacher Enhancement Project (MASTEP). This exciting three-year program
addresses the professional development needs of middle school mathematics and
science teachers in Northeastern Oklahoma. Deborah Carment
is Co-Director of the MASTEP program. The Northeastern Oklahoma
Mathematics and Science Teacher Association (NOMSTA) was
established as part of the MASTEP grant. The second Annual Meeting was
held on January 31, 2004
at NSU in Tahlequah. More information can be found on the web at
http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~NOMSTA.
NSU is pleased to have passed
its NCATE accreditation in the fall. Several curricular changes were
implemented as a result of the NCATE process. We have added History of
Mathematics and Discrete Mathematics to the required courses for the B.S.Ed. degree.
We will probably lose a position
at the end of this academic year, due to the state budget problems.
This will increase our adjunct and faculty overloads even more. Julia
Sawyer, our statistician, is currently serving 1/4 time in the
Assessment Office.
This past year 27 NSU students
were initiated into the Oklahoma Alpha chapter of Kappa Mu
Epsilon. For the sixth year in a row, the students designed and sold 50
math shirts. The theme of the shirt was "Top 5 Math
Jokes." They sponsored several guest lectures, including Elwyn Davis, Math Dept. Chair at Pittsburg
State University,
and a presentation from the National Imagery Mapping Agency. Students Joe Gonzales, Miri Whisnant, and Bryanne Weaver, and faculty members Joan E. Bell and Max Ellis, attended the 34th
Biennial Convention of Kappa Mu Epsilon in Tulsa.
NSU student Aaron Scroggins
was given credit for submitting the correct solution to a problem in the
Fall, 2003 issue of The Pentagon.
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Northwestern Oklahoma
State University
Submitted by Tim Maharry
In May 2003, Billy
Stewart retired after 17 years of service to Northwestern as a
full-time faculty member. He continues to support many departmental
activities and has been teaching part-time during the 2003-04 academic year.
The Mathematics and Computer
Science Department at Northwestern Oklahoma State University began the
academic year with 5 full-time faculty, 1 professor emeritus, and 5
part-time/adjuncts serving campuses in Alva, Enid, and Woodward. Several faculty members continue to be
active in organizations such as MAA, NCTM, and ASA. In addition, many
of Northwestern’s math faculty are involved in
judging for the Northwestern Science Fair held each March on the Northwestern
campus as well as judging for the high school curricular contest held each
April. The campus-wide high school curricular contest involves
high school students from around northwest Oklahoma
and southern Kansas. Students take exams in areas such as
Algebra I, Algebra II, Plane Geometry, and Senior Math. Many faculty are also involved in the BEST competition.
The BEST competition (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) is a
robot-building contest for high-school students hosted by the Math &
Science departments at Northwestern.
In May 2004 Northwestern’s Math
Department will host Mathematics Technology: An Applications Paradigm.
This is a summer math academy which invites 18 outstanding high school
students for a week long academy on the Northwestern campus. The
students are introduced to a variety of applications of mathematics as
well as instruction with the TI-92 graphing calculator and Mathematica and Derive computer
software. This will be the 10th consecutive year for the
math academy at Northwestern. It has been funded in the past by a grant
from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and will be sponsored
this year through a corporate grant from Conoco-Phillips.
The math academy is organized by Northwestern faculty members Sheila
Brintnall, Tim Maharry,
and Billy Stewart.
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Oklahoma
Baptist University
Submitted by Eileen Hargrove
Eugene Hobbs, Chair of the
Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, conducted two student academies
under state auspices and one teacher institute under the No Child Left Behind
initiative last summer on the campus of East Central University.
Two
students participated in summer research opportunities for
undergraduates. Senior mathematics major, Adam Collins, was at
Mississippi State University working in applied
mathematics. Senior mathematics
education major, Alex Barrett, did an REU at Baylor in physics. Both presented
their projects at one of the monthly mathematics club meetings.
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Oklahoma
City Community College
Submitted by Ken Harrelson
After 15
years of service to the department, Francis Foster retired at the end
of the last academic year. Francis was an outstanding instructor that
had been recognized on several occasions at the local and state level for her
commitment to the teaching profession. She will be greatly missed.
Her recent role of coordinating our Business Calculus sequence will be
taken over by Marsha Austin.
The
department was fortunate to replace Francis with John Barker. John
is not new to the college since he has been the Director of Research for the
last eight years. During that time he taught as an adjunct for the
department. John has a Masters Degree in Mathematics from Southeastern Oklahoma State University and a
Doctorate in Higher Education Administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Renovations
to the Math Lab were finished in time for the spring semester. The
$80,000 project included a new drop ceiling, new carpet, new desks, and
office space for the Math Lab Coordinator Sharon Coffman.
The area is now completely walled in with a set of double doors in the
entry area.
The College
will again host the regional MATHCOUNTS meeting on February 14th. The
event is sponsored by the Oklahoma Society of Professional Engineers. During the competition about 200 sixth,
seventh, and eight graders from schools in the metropolitan area compete for
team and individual honors during the day-long event. Lisa Buckelew
is helping with coordinating the event.
The
department is offering several help sessions to improve student success in
mathematics. Linda Knox and John Barker are offering
three workshops to help our Elementary Algebra students with arithmetic
skills early in the spring semester. The workshops cover a 3 hour block
of time and are designed so that students can drop in at any time. The
department is also offering eight workshops on using graphing calculators for
our College Algebra students. The hour long sessions are being offered
by Lisa Buckelew, Paul Buckelew,
Paul
Lewis, Ken Harrelson, and Sherry Ray. The calculator
workshops were offered in the fall with some success so the department is
expanding the number of sessions.
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Oklahoma
State University
Submitted by Alan Adolphson
It has been a year of change for
OSU mathematics. Benny Evans has stepped down as
department head and Alan Adolphson
has taken over. Please wish him luck! Marvin Keener stepped
down as Executive Vice President of OSU and returned to teaching math full
time last spring. Also joining us last spring was new assistant
professor Ning Ju,
an addition to our PDE/Applied Math group. In the fall, we were joined
by new assistant professor Ralph Kaufmann who is leading our
rebuilding efforts in Algebraic Geometry.
John Wolfe and Doug
Aichele received National Science Foundation
funding for their three-year project GeoSET
(Geometric Structures for Elementary Teachers). Their goals are to
develop and disseminate materials for a discovery-based geometry curriculum
for preservice elementary teachers and give
training and support in the use of these materials. They are actively
looking for GeoSET Partners who have common
interests and would like to be involved in their 2004 GeoSET
Summer Institute. You can find out more about GeoSET
at the website: www.math.okstate.edu/~geoset
David Wright's popular
book Indra's Pearls (with coauthors David Mumford and Caroline Series, published by Cambridge
University Press) contains some of the most intricate and beautiful computer
graphics you will see anywhere. David has now built a website for the
book, klein.math.okstate.edu/IndrasPearls. It contains a lot of related information as
well as fun stuff, including posters and movies.
A number of our faculty received
recognition for their accomplishments. Igor Pritsker
was promoted to associate professor and Leticia Barchini
was promoted to professor. In further recognition of her research
achievements, Leticia was named Southwestern Bell Professor of
Mathematics. She will hold this rotating endowed position for at least
two years. Jim Cogdell was named the Vaughn
Professor of Number Theory. Jim's research on the Langlands
Conjectures and Hilbert's Eleventh Problem has received international
acclaim, and he gave an invited address to the International Congress of
Mathematicians in August, 2002.
This year we have only two faculty on leave. Brian Conrey
is still serving as director of the American Institute of Mathematics in Palo
Alto, California, and David
(Witte) Morris is teaching and doing research at the University
of Lethbridge
in Alberta, Canada.
We look forward to seeing both of them again soon.
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Oklahoma
State University
– Oklahoma City
Submitted by Marcel
Maupin
CJ Frederick, Math Department Head, is scheduled
for promotion to the rank of Assistant Professor.
Irving Tang developed and taught a
course in Strength of Materials for the Engineering Division. Irving
has also been nominated by Educational Testing Service to serve on the test
development committee of the College Board for the CLEP examinations in
College Algebra and College Math.
Marcel Maupin attended the national
AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges) in Salt
Lake City, Utah,
in November of 2003 as an official delegate for the state of Oklahoma.
Our
General College Math course is now available on the Internet.
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Southeastern Oklahoma
State University
Submitted by Charles
Matthews
The economy is giving the math
department a hard time lately. Karla
Oty is now at Colorado
State University
at Pueblo, and David Dewsnap
took a position in Houston at The
University of St. Thomas. Jimmy
Martin is planning on
retiring this May. And there is a hiring freeze at Southeastern, so we
have gone from 10 on our faculty to 7 next year. We're hoping to hire
new faculty soon.
Brett Elliott has accepted the position of chair of the
faculty senate. Charles
Matthews is now chair of the math department. Chris Moretti won two faculty senate awards: one
for teaching and another for service to the university. Linda Kallam
won a faculty senate award for scholarly activity. The math department
won the $2500 assessment award. At the awards ceremony, the math
department swept all the awards for the school!!
Students Lee Ann Rayburn, Shane
Dove, and J. B. Pritchett entered the COMAP contest last February and
won the Meritorious award, which places the team in the top 75 or so
out of 639 teams worldwide. The problem that the team worked on was to
determine the number of cardboard boxes needed to cushion the fall of a stunt
man on a motorcycle jumping over an elephant. Southeastern is proud of
these students for working so hard and coming up with a good solution.
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University
of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Submitted by Dmitry Khavinson
Alexandre Solynine
from the Steklov Mathematical Institute in St.
Petersburgh, Russia
is still visiting our Department and is working with our Analysis group. Alexandre does
research in Complex Analysis.
Yuying Qiao from China
is visiting our Department this year to work with John Ryan. Yuying does
research in Clifford Analysis.
Dimiter Vassilev has
returned in January from his visit at McGill
University.
Luca Capogna and Loredana Lanzani are on sabbatical leave
this year. They spent the Fall semester at University
of Michigan at Ann
Arbor, and will spend the Spring semester at Princeton
University.
A number of members of the
Department hold prestigious research and educational grants from the NSF and
other agencies. Svetlana Vetrenko
from Kiev was our first recipient
of the new Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship founded from the Walton's Gift
moneys. We have also awarded 5
Doctoral Academy Fellowships also funded by the Walton's gift to the
University.
The Department will be
sponsoring its 28th Spring Lecture
Series featuring David Donoho from Stanford
University. The title of this year program is
"Recent Developments in Applied Harmonic Analysis: Multiscale
Geometric Analysis". For more
information and also for some current events and our seminar and colloquia
series, please, visit our web page http://www.uark.edu/depts/mathinfo/.
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University
of Arkansas at Little
Rock
Submitted by Cassandra Cox
Alan Johnson is
retiring in May after 27 years at UALR.
Christy Jackson joined the department in August as an
instructor.
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University
of Central Arkansas
Submitted by Donna Foss
In the Department of Mathematics
at the University of Central
Arkansas, two rank advancements have occurred
in the last year. Carolyn Pinchback
was promoted to full Professor and Fred Hickling
was promoted to Associate Professor.
A particular highlight of the
last year is the increase in student research projects culminating in
multiple presentations including one at the national Joint AMS-MAA meeting in
Phoenix by Jesse Pratt who
presented his poster, “Symmetries of a Generalized KdV
Equation.” His mentor, Danny Arrigo,
also presented at the Joint meeting.
The department’s new BSE program
was reviewed and approved for recommendation to NCATE. The program
revisions include a discipline-specific curriculum course, an internship
requirement prior to student teaching, and a remodeled secondary mathematics
methods course.
David Peterson of our
department will be presenting the Student Workshop on Musical Acoustics at
the Section meeting on Friday, March 26. As a field of scientific
inquiry, acoustics is broadly interdisciplinary, including mathematics and
physics. Students from his Applied Mathematics class will illustrate
concepts through Mathematica
demonstrations. David has done research on marimba bars, ocarinas, and
hammered dulcimers and his avocations include building musical instruments
and performing.
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University
of Oklahoma
Submitted by Paul Goodey
The Department is very pleased
to welcome Max Forester and Zeno Huang to visiting
postdoctoral positions. Max received
his PhD in 1999 from the University
of Michigan. He joined us after having positions at
Cornell and Warwick. He works in
Geometric Group Theory. Zeno got his
PhD from Rice in 2003 and works in Harmonic Maps and the Geometry of Teichmuller Space.
They have already made significant contributions to the department and
we are very happy to have them on our faculty. Jintae
Kim continued in his postdoctoral position. He works in partial differential equations
but has been seen talking to topologists. Last year saw the retirement of Walter
Kelley after 30 years of exemplary service to the department, university
and community. He is, of course, a
past winner of the section's Distinguished Teaching Award and a regular at
our meetings. He is frequently seen
around the department and appears happier than ever. We also lost the
services of Brent Gordon who resigned after spending a period in Washington
D.C. as a program director at the
National Science Foundation. We miss
them both and wish them every happiness.
Congratulations go to Andy
Miller and Semion Gutman
who were both promoted to Full Professorships last summer. Also to Curtis McKnight who
received the Henry Rinsland Memorial Award for
Excellence in Educational Research and to Teri Jo Murphy who
received the BP-Amoco Foundation Good Teaching award. Ara Basmajian, Ed Cline, Teri Murphy, Tomasz Przebinda
and Gerard Walschap all experienced
fruitful sabbaticals last year and are now thrilled to be back in the saddle.
Our graduate program had another
excellent intake last year. We welcomed twenty new students into our various
programs. One doctoral degree was awarded during the year, we congratulate
the
recipient: Dr. Jon
White. Much of the recent success in graduate recruitment derives
from our annual OU MathFest. This is a weekend
recruiting event for all prospective graduate students. It is held each year
at the end of January and attracts students from all over the country. The
university has also been generous in providing us with numerous graduate
fellowships.
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University
of Tulsa
Submitted by William
Coberly
Mathematics and Computer Science
major Tyler Moore won a Marshall Scholarship. Tyler, who previously won a Goldwater
scholarship, will pursue his graduate studies at Cambridge.
The TU Student Chapter of the
MAA hosted the 7th annual Hurricane Mathfest on November 18, 2003. Over 128 students from 16 area high schools
participated in this math contest.
The 10th annual Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day will be held on February 25, 2004 at The University
of Tulsa. Over 140 freshman and sophomore girls from Tulsa
area schools will explore several topics in mathematics and careers in
mathematics through workshops, speakers, and problem solving activities. The keynote speaker will be Yvonne Lutz of
the National Security Agency.
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