Return to Fall 2005 Newsletter
Ashford University
Glen Just
Glen.Just@ashford.edu
I am not sure if everyone is aware of the recent changes here in Clinton, IA. Back in March, Bridgepoint Education purchased The Franciscan University of the Prairies and subsequently changed the name to Ashford University. Our on-campus mathematics programs have remained the same with this change. However, Ashford University is currently working on a degree completion program through a newly establish College of External Studies that could impact the offerings in the mathematics area. We recently hired Abigail Murphy to teach an evening section of Combined Algebra due to an increase in students at that level.
Central College
Mark Mills
millsm@central.edu
We were very pleased to have Wendy Weber win the 2005 Dr. John Wesselink Award for Outstanding Performance in Teaching here on-campus. Wendy has also been busy working on issues related to mathematics secondary education here at Central. She has been a part of the PMET program over the past several years, and she recently received a PMET grant (along with Teresa Finken in Education) to develop a mathematics course that incorporates history into topics that could be beneficial for elementary education students.
At the end of the 2004-2005 school year, Mark Mills and Wendy Weber both received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.
Tom Linton is on sabbatical for the 2005-2006 school year, and Wendy Weber will be on sabbatical for Spring 2006.
Russ Goodman is the co-author of the article "FoxTrot Brings Mathematics to the Comics Page" that will appear in the November 2005 issue of Math Horizons. He also authored the article "Using Letter-Writing to Enhance a Calculus Course" in the September 2005 issue of PRIMUS.
Mark Mills and Al Hibbard participated as readers for the 2005 AP Calculus exam this past summer in Fort Collins, CO.
Our department was very pleased to have two students accepted into mathematics REU programs this past summer. Rusty From participated in the REU at Grand Valley State University and studied the geometry of polynomials. Diana Carr participated in the REU at California State University at San Bernardino and studied the congestion of graphs. Both will be giving presentations at the AMS sectional meeting in Lincoln, NE, in October. Diana also plans to participate in a poster session at the San Antonio meetings in January.
We have been pleased to participate in the University of Iowa's Heartland project by having Central alum (now U of I mathematics graduate student) Luke Bennett teaching as an adjunct in our department.
Our department graduated 26 majors: 5 mathematics majors; 4 math/CS majors; and 17 CS majors. Five of our majors were actually double majors in another discipline. A number of our graduates went on to graduate school in mathematics or computer science.
Coe College
Cal Van Niewaal
cvanniew@coe.edu
Coe has announced a major renovation of Stuart Hall, the oldest classroom building on campus. When the renovation is completed next year the Department of Mathematical Sciences will relocate into expanded facilities. In addition to new office, classroom and laboratory spaces, plans call for a student lounge and study area complete with computers and a small library of journals and other print reference materials.
Terry Hostetler, Associate Professor of Computer Science, has begun a three-year term as chair of the department. He succeeds Cal Van Niewaal who is now serving as Director of Coe's First-Year Seminar Program.
Jon White, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, is working with students this fall to revitalize the math club on campus. The club was dormant last year after all of the most active student members graduated in May 2003.
Gavin Cross, Associate Professor of Statistics, and his wife, Lisa Barnett, are expecting their first child in December.
Cornell College
Jim Freeman
jfreeman@cornellcollege.edu
The Mathematics Department at Cornell is in the middle of getting a major curricular change approved by the Cornell faculty. The major components of the proposed curriculum are reducing the calculus sequence from four courses to two courses; teaching several variable calculus in the second course; adding a slow calculus course and dropping the pre-calculus course; adding a proof course using number theory as the topic; adding discrete mathematics and statistics requirements to the major; dropping numerical analysis for a modeling course; and adding a complex variables course. The department prepared a 62 page document on the new curriculum. If you would like to see this document, contact Jim Freeman.
In May 2004, Cornell College inaugurated its new course: "On The Shoulders of Giants: Great Mathematical Ideas." The idea of the new course is to present larger mathematical themes from a basic perspective in order to introduce liberal arts majors to mathematics as a way of thinking rigorously. The topics for the first course, taught by Steve Bean, were graph theory, surface theory and knot theory. The course attracted students from Art, Music, English, and Philosophy, among other disciplines (students who have already taken calculus are prohibited from taking the course). Most students were more than willing to experiment with the new ideas, and student evaluations indicate that the course was well-received. Topics for the course will vary in future terms. In September, 2004, Jim Freeman taught the course exploring the mathematical ideas from the art of origami.
Dordt College
Calvin Jongsma
jongsma@dordt.edu
This summer, Nick Breems moved to Sioux Center with his wife Jennifer and two young children to begin teaching in the Computer Science program at Dordt College. He is heading up Dordt's new program in networking and system administration. Nick continues his PhD research through the University of Illinois in the area of software reliability and fault tolerance.
Drake University
Alexander Kleiner
afkleiner@drake.edu
Luz de Alba is on sabbatical leave for the 2005-06 year.
Kenneth J. Kopecky is on transitional leave for the 2005-06 year. In May 2006, he will retire after 42 years on the Drake faculty
David Oakland has returned after a year sabbatical.
Dan Alexander continues to serve has the Director of the Center for Digital Technology and Learning.
Dan Alexander gave an invited address, in Germany, about Banach's experiences in World War II. His presentation was in the Special History session of the Second Joint AMS/DMV Meetings as part of a workshop on mathematicians in war. He also spoke on the same topic at the University of Bari, in Bari, Italy.
In the spring, Bill Marion, of Valparaiso University, served as an external reviewer as part of the Department's on-going self-study.
A paper entitled "Schema Thematization: A Framework and an Example" by Bernadette Baker and coauthors Laurel Cooley and Maria Trigueros has been accepted for publication by the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.
A paper entitled "Association schemes based on isotropic subspaces, Part 1" by Michael Rieck was published in "Discrete Mathematics" (Elsevier) in Volume 298 (2005) , pages 301-320. It is also available on-line at this link.
A paper entitled “Rigor in Analysis: From Newton to Cauchy” by James Collinwood took second place in the HOMSIGMAA (History of Mathematics Special Interest Group of the MAA) second annual Student Paper Contest in the History of Mathematics. James presented versions of this paper at the section meeting and at the student research conference at Simpson last spring. He graduated from Drake in May and is now working as an actuary in Chicago. A list of winners and a link to their papers can be found at http://home.adelphi.edu/%7Ebradley/HOMSIGMAA/.
Grinnell College
Keri Kornelson
kornelso@math.grinnell.edu
Greetings from Grinnell! Here's our news and events from the year.
Arnold Adelberg had two papers published this year: (1) "Universal
Kummer Congruences Mod Prime Powers", Journal of Number Theory, Vol. 109
(Sept. 2004), 362-378; (2) "Not So Complex Solutions to Fermat's Equation" with
David Rudel (former student) and Art Benjamin, Mathematics Magazine, Vol.
77 (Oct. 2004), 300-302. He had numerous reviews in Mathematics Reviews
and did a great deal of refereeing, for multiple journals. He continues to work
on the irreducibility of Bernoulli polynomials of the second kind, and am making
slow but steady progress.
Marc Chamberland spent the 2004-2005 year on sabbatical in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He collaborated there with Jonathan Borwein and Karl Dilcher on problems in classical analysis and number theory using the growing paradigm of experimental mathematics. One paper appeared this year: "Weakened Markus-Yamabe conditions for 2-dimensional global asymptotic stability" with J. Llibre (Universitat de Barcelona) and G. Swirszcz (IBM), Nonlinear Analysis 59 (2004), 951-958. A number of other works are in progress, have been submitted, or will appear soon. Besides giving talks on Pi, the 3x+1 problem, and Jacobian conjectures, he also co-organized a special session on Dynamics and Number Theory for the Joint meetings in Atlanta. Marc also co-organized a Mellon-supported workshop on teaching a course in Mathematical Modeling held at Pomona College in November, 2004.
Visual Linear Algebra by Gene Herman and Mike Pepe (Seattle Central Community College) was published by John Wiley & Sons in March of this year. Here is a brief quote from the preface:
"Visual Linear Algebra" is a new kind of textbook -- a blend of interactive computer tutorials and traditional text. The computer tutorials provide a lively learning environment in which students are introduced to concepts and methods and where they develop their intuition. The traditional sections constitute the backbone that supports the development of theory and where students' understanding is solidified.
The book has 47 sections, of which 30 are also available as Maple worksheets and Mathematica notebooks.
Charles Jepsen has finished his first year on Senior Faculty Status and has adapted remarkably quickly to no longer being in the classroom. He did direct one student research project in summer 2005, working with Valeria Vulpe on the problem of fitting one geometric figure inside another. A paper containing one of our results has been submitted for publication. The paper "Orders of L-Shaped Polyominoes", the result of previous student research projects with Lowell Vaughn and Daren Brantley, appeared in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics. Finally, I gave a talk on "Equidissections of Trapezoids" at the spring meeting of the Iowa section of the MAA.
Keri Kornelson was delighted to survive her first year of full-time teaching and has found the second year a bit less frantic. She spent the summer participating in an NSF-funded program called IMMERSE at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, teaching and mentoring students getting ready to begin graduate school in math. For those of you at four-year institutions, you should be aware that this is a great bridge program and you might suggest it to your students who are heading to graduate school next year. She had two papers appear this year, and she finished revisions on another, and she continues to collaborate with Karen Shuman here at Grinnell and Palle Jorgensen at University of Iowa.
Shonda Kuiper was recently awarded an NSF CCLI grant of $145,000 to
develop a new Statistics II course that will be taught around multi-day labs
that integrate advanced statistical methods, scientific problems (many from
Grinnell faculty), and technology. The course will be our natural
follow-up course to our Applied Statistics course, which we are innovating using
the Chance-Rossman ISCAM text.
Emily Moore gave a talk at the "Graph Theory with Altitude" conference held in celebration of Joan Hutchinson's 60th birthday. The talk was on a paper Joan and Emily have written on extending graph colorings. This past summer Emily worked with a student, Steffi Fried, on a problem in list colorings. (The Sudoku puzzles can be interpreted as problems in list coloring. Ask if you are interested.)
Tom Moore is enjoying teaching our Applied Statistics course using Chance and Rossman's ISCAM text, an introductory text that uses a "workshop style" of learning aimed at quantitatively advanced students (we have a calculus II pre-requisite). Shonda Kuiper and I decided that this text would be more consistent with the curricular projects her NSF grant will support. I also enjoyed working with Shonda and 2 research students this summer using data on asthama prevalence rates provided by the EPA office in Chicago. Currently, I am chair of the MAA's SIGMAA on Statistics Education.
John Stone is on sabbatical this semester, working on a textbook, Algorithms for Functional Programming.
Henry Walker was recently appointed to a second three-year term as a member of the MAA Committee on the Profession. One of his assignments has been to work with a subcommittee on drafting an statement of ethics for the MAA. He also serves as Chair of the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and he writes an on-going column on "Classroom Issues" for the SIGCSE Bulletin inroads. He continues to support several major software packages, to consult with colleges and universities in the external review of math/cs departments, to grade AP exams in computer science, and to encourage various collaborative efforts among faculty in computer science and the mathematical sciences. In addition to teaching at Grinnell, he (reluctantly) serves as the Chair of the Subcommittee on Academic Honesty, and as the Building Liaison for the Phase 2 expansion and renovation of the Science Building.
CHARLES JEPSEN has finished his first year on Senior Faculty
Status and has adapted remarkably quickly to no longer being in
the classroom. He did direct one student research project
in summer 2005, working with Valeria Vulpe on the problem of
fitting one geometric figure inside another. A paper containing
one of our results has been submitted for publication. The
paper "Orders of L-Shaped Polyominoes", the result of previous
student research projects with Lowell Vaughn and Daren Brantley,
appeared in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics. Finally,
I gave a talk on "Equidissections of Trapezoids" at the spring
meeting of the Iowa section MAA.
Iowa State University
Mathematics Department
Stephen J. Willson
willson@math.iastate.edu
The department expanded its space to take over a considerable portion of the
third floor of Carver Hall, as well as the previous fourth floor. The new
main office is 396 Carver. Many improvements were made in the building, and now
fewer people are crowded into offices. There is also another
computer lab in the building.
Several faculty are on leave at other universities. Dan Ashlock is still at the University of Guelph, near Toronto, Canada. Oleg Emanouilov is at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, while Xiaoming Wang is at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Jonathan Smith is taking sabbatical in Poland, where he is working on another book.
Professor Jim Evans received the LAS Mid-career Award in Excellence in Research. He was recognized for his outstanding contributions to the areas of thin film growth and catalytic surface reactions.
Professor Wolfgang Kliemann has returned to full time in the department after many years in the university administration. Paul Sacks has taken over the job of graduate coordinator for the department.
The department awarded 9 Ph.D.'s in the last year.
On the personal side, Professor Roger Maddux suffered a heart attack late this summer but is recovering well. Former professor Dick Sprague died in his home this past spring.
Loras College
Robert Keller
Robert.Keller@loras.edu
The Division of Mathematics, Engineering and Computer Science at Loras College said a fond farewell to long-time faculty member Larry Zettel this past June. In recent years, Zettel acted as both Department and Division Chairs and taught courses such as Calculus, Discrete Mathematics, and Senior Math Capstone. Zettel’s sense of humor and tell-it-like-it-is manner of speaking will be sorely missed.
Dan Willis (Associate Professor, Math) and Chris Nugent (Adjunct Professor, Education) received a three-year Title IIA grant in the amount of $450,000 to direct professional development modeled on East Asian lesson study for 48 K-6 teachers in Eastern Iowa each year. Robert Keller and Marlene Pinzka (Associate Professors, Math) assisted Willis and Nugent training teachers during two week-long summer workshops. Additionally, Keller and Willis received a two-year PMET grant to support the development of a two-course sequence in mathematics for prospective elementary school teachers.
Luther College
Ruth Berger
bergerr@luther.edu
In the past year the Luther Mathematics department underwent an extensive program review, cumulating in a visit from outside reviewers Steve Kennedy (Carleton College) and Matt Richey (St. Olaf College). We are currently thinking about how to implement some of the improvements they suggested. Anyone who has recently done serious study and thinking about courses to satisfy an All College Quantitative Reasoning requirement please send an e-mail to Reg Laursen (laursenr@luther.edu) so we can converse with you.
We had three teams competing in the Math Modeling Competition last Spring, two received "Meritorious" designation for their solution!
In 2005 we graduated 3 math/statistics majors, 13 math majors, 13 computer science majors and 23 math minors. For the first time in recent memory, there were no double math-physics majors.
Joyce Becker served as Vice President Post-Secondary of the ICTM. She was also Program Chair and lined up 75 speakers for the Annual Conference 2005 with the theme " Improving Mathematics Achievement". Keynoters included Akihiko Takahashi speaking on "Lesson Study" as well as NCTM President Cathy Seeley on the topic " Engagement and Expectations- the Road to Equity".
Ruth Berger presented a talk “Escher’s World and Green Jello World, a concrete introduction to Hyperbolic Geometry” at the Iowa MAA meeting this Spring.
Richard Bernatz collaborated with Kai Tsuruta, a Luther junior majoring in mathematics and physics, on a mathematical model for predicting rainfall-runoff in the Upper Iowa River watershed. One aspect of their study incorporated suitable probability density functions for rainfall events as a means of identifying the 1%- and 0.5%-annual flood events for the watershed. They will present their findings at the Pew Midstates Science and Mathematics Symposium held on the campus of the University of Chicago November 5th and 6th.
Reginald Laursen continues to revise his manuscript entitled Calculus One Motivated Precalculus for the beginning of Luther’s integrated Precalculus/Calculus courses. It was class tested again this fall and will undergo further revision. Since 1999, initially with the help of math majors, Reg has provided the design for the Country Heritage Community Maize Maze. This year the maize in Elgin, IA, will be a feature segment for Country Music Television's program Small Town Secrets which will air at various times during the month of November.
Eric Westlund taught a special topics course on Chaotic Dynamical Systems in spring 2005. He and his students enjoyed it immensely, and we hope to offer it alternating years. Eric received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor this fall.
Troy Meyers, who holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Iowa, has been working on strengthening our Statistics program. In the past, the department has offered two classes in applied statistics: Linear Regression and Design of Experiments were offered every other spring and were independent of each other. Troy has developed an integrated two semester sequence in applied statistics that is now offered every year.
Maharishi University of
Management
Anne Dow
adow@mum.edu
Cathy Gorini has been appointed Dean of Faculty after a year as acting dean. Her book Facts on File Geometry Handbook has been published in paperback.
Anne Dow has been appointed Chairperson of the Department of Mathematics.
David Streid is now Chief Administrative Officer for the University, but he still teaches mathematics from time to time.
Dr. David Scharf has joined the Department half time as Associate Professor of Mathematics. David's Ph.D. was in foundations of physics from Johns-Hopkins University. His research interests include foundations of mathematics and physics.
The Department is now offering a B.S. in mathematical sciences.
Simpson College
Murphy Waggoner
waggoner@simpson.edu
Bill Dunning retired in the spring semester after almost 20 years of service to Simpson College, and 17 years as the chair of the Mathematics Department. We wish him well in his retirement.
We are pleased to introduce Debra Czarneski, who joined the faculty to fill the tenure track position left open by Dr. Dunning. We have also been able to hire Bill Schellhorn as an adjunct. Both of these new hires have undergraduate degrees in mathematics from Mount Mercy and doctorates from Louisiana State University.
Rick Spellerberg is on sabbatical this semester continuing his work in game theory. He presented an introduction to game theory to the Math Club called “Big Monkey vs. Little Monkey.” He and a couple of his research students will be presenting their results at the annual meeting of the Iowa Philosophical Association the weekend of November 5. The same weekend, three of our mathematics students will be attending the Argonne Symposium for Undergraduates in Science, Engineering and Mathematics at Argonne National Laboratories.
We have begun two new seminars in problem solving. One seminar focuses on questions similar to those on the Putnam Examination, and the other will emphasize mathematical modeling. The seminars are team taught by the department, and have been well received by the students.
October 22 is our second annual Mathematics Day. We schedule this event to coincide with Homecoming, and it is an opportunity for us to get alumni, current students and high school students together. We use the event to help students in mathematics learn more about the variety of areas of study in mathematics, the opportunities for graduate study and the diversity of job opportunities available to them.
The Midwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium was held at Simpson on April 9, 2005. Again, we had about 60 participants representing 8 educational institutions and a variety of other organizations. There were 12 undergraduate presentations and 2 faculty presentations. The presentation topics included solutions to problems from the Mathematical and Interdisciplinary Contests in Modeling, game theory and group theory as applied to kinship, reports on REUs and an undergraduate-built supercomputer. The next Symposium will be held on Saturday, April 1, 2005. For more information, visit http://www.simpson.edu/math/beyond/mums2005.html.
Five teams from Simpson competed in the Mathematical and Interdisciplinary Contests in Modeling and 3 of the teams received an Honorable Mention.
We have 50 mathematics majors, and 10 of them will be graduating in the spring. Nine students will be completing research projects in the spring as part of Senior Seminar, and 1 student will be presenting a thesis on her work in game theory as part of a Mathematics Major with Honors.
University of Iowa
Mathematics Department
David Manderscheid
mander@math.uiowa.edu
Without doubt the biggest news this year is that the Department won the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring for our work with US minority graduate students. We are the single largest producer of US minority Ph.D.s in Mathematics in the country. David Manderscheid accepted the award on behalf of the Department at a White House ceremony in May. Also attending were Juan Gatica, Phil Kutzko, and Sara Del Valle, a recent Ph.D. who now holds a postdoc at Los Alamos. Gene Madison was also invited but could not attend. As a part of the event, David Manderscheid and the other awardees met with President George Bush in the Oval Office.
On to the more usual things for the newsletter: The administration of the Department has changed: David Manderscheid continues as Chair, Dan Anderson is the new Associate Chair for the Graduate Program, Weimin Han is the new Associate Chair for the Undergraduate Program, and Yi Li is the new Director of the Program in Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences (AMCS). Herb Hethcote stepped down as Director of AMCS after over twenty years of service. Herb is retiring at the end of the year and wanted to help insure a smooth transition to the new Director. We are thankful to Herb for his great service. The new Director, Yi Li, had been in charge of the Graduate Program and Dan Anderson had been in charge of the Undergraduate Program.
We have two new assistant professors and two new postdocs this year. We had one retirement at the end of last year. Colleen Mitchell and Hao Fang are the new assistant professors. Hao was a student of Chang at Princeton and he is coming off a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study. His research is in Geometric Analysis. Colleen was a student of Reed at Duke and did a postdoc with Koppel at Boston University. Her research is in Mathematical Biology. The new postdocs this year are Brian Moore and Maggy Tomova. Brian got his Ph.D. with Reich at the University of Surrey and comes to us from the University of Montreal. Maggy just finished her Ph.D. with Scharlemann at UC-Santa Barbara. Brian’s research is in Numerical Analysis and Maggy’s is in Topology. Ken Atkinson retired this past year (but hasn’t stopped doing mathematics!).
The Department of Mathematics undergraduate program continues to grow. We now have 203 majors. Our undergraduate research program is thriving, with twelve students working on projects with faculty in areas such as operator theory, number theory, and assessment. Interest in our "Program C" major remains strong. This major is designed to meet the needs of students who want a degree in mathematics with a clear specialization in some area of application. The key is that certain courses in the area of specialization are counted towards the Mathematics degree. Students can focus on areas for which programs have been approved, such as Optimal Business Decision Making, Economics, Physics, Biomathematics and others, or they can propose new ones. Our new required course for all elementary education majors is working well. Walter Seaman designed this course in consultation with the faculty of the College of Education.
Our graduate programs also continue to thrive also with 115 students currently studying for MS and Ph.D. degrees. Over 30 of these students are in the AMCS Ph.D. program. Students in this interdisciplinary program build a strong foundation in theoretical and applied mathematics but also do work in other areas. Some of the recent graduates of the program wrote dissertations in the areas of stochastic optimization in finance, atmospheric chemical models, and image compression. Our graduate students come from Iowa and surrounding states but also from California, Alabama, and New York among others. Our foreign graduate students come from around the world with the most students from Latin America, Korea, Romania and China. Currently 62% of our Ph.D. students are US citizens, 40 % are women and 20% are underrepresented US minorities. This is the second year of our new graduate curriculum and it is a hit with both students and faculty. This curriculum makes our exam structure simpler and less burdensome and allows students to get into research much more quickly. We continue to use senior TAs to run problem sessions for first year graduate courses and also to use senior TAs to run Ph.D. qualifying exam preparation seminars during the summer. Most of our Ph.D.s last year took jobs teaching at four year colleges or institutions that offer M.S. degrees. A number of our Ph.D.s took postdoctoral positions at schools including Ohio State University, Dartmouth and UC-San Diego.
For more information about what is going at Iowa, including our seminar schedule and information on our distinguished visitor series, please see our web page: http://www.math.uiowa.edu/. We invite you to visit campus or join us at our reception for alumni and friends of the Department at the Winter meetings in San Antonio.
University of Northern Iowa
Joel Haack
haack@math.uni.edu
UNI is happy to welcome four new faculty to the Department of Mathematics:
Shangzhen Luo, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Ph.D. Mathematics University of Missouri, 2005; M.Phil. Mathematical Statistics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2001; B.S. Mathematics, Nankai University, 1998.
Bridgette Stevens, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Ph.D. University of Missouri, expected Fall 2005; M.A. Mathematics for the Middle Grades 4-8, 1999; B.A. Elementary Education, UNI, 1995.
Brian Townsend, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Ph.D. University of Missouri, expected Fall 2005; M.S. Pittsburg State University, 2001; B.S.Ed. Pittsburg State University, 1998.
Jeffrey Selden, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Ph.D. Mathematics, University of Arizona, 2004; B.S. Mathematics, New Mexico State University, 1998.
Min Lee was selected to receive a Regents Award for Faculty Excellence.
Joel Haack was again named Interim Dean of the College of Natural Sciences.
This page was last revised on October 17, 2005.