Newsletter #1, October 2006
Department News
Our annual awards banquet was held on April 12, 2006. 10
students received awards based on their Mathematics achievements at
UTC. Congratulations to all the winners.
Two incoming freshmen were awarded scholarships from funds donated by
two generous alumnae. The first ever Dorothy Dean
Shelton Mathematics Scholarship was awarded to Caitlin
S. Harwood. The third Marjorie
Watson Mathematics
Scholarship was awarded to Dustin C. Banks.
Faculty News
Dr. Lucas Van der Merwe was named a UC Foundation Assistant Professor.
In addition to teaching, our faculty have been very productive in terms
of scholarly activity this year. Many have had one or more papers
accepted, including: Drs.
David Ashe, Boris Belinskiy, Sharon Brueggeman, Aniekan Ebiefung, John
Graef, Lingju Kong, Ron Smith, and Lucas Van der Merwe. Many have given
presentations at the state, national or international level, including:
Drs. David Ashe, Boris Belinskiy, Sharon Brueggeman, Betsy Darken, John
Graef, Lingju Kong, Steve Kuhn, Marc-Loizeaux, Terry Walters, and Lucas
Van der Merwe.
Three members of our faculty recently became proud parents. Dr. Lingju
Kong and
his wife Zhen Wang welcomed Michael Dexun Kong on March 6, 2006. Emma
Barioli was born on April 24, 2006 to Dr. Francesco Barioli and his
wife Diana. Dr.
Matt Matthews and his wife Amanda welcomed their second son Ryan Daniel
Matthews on May 12, 2006. Mandy Matthews is also a former adjunct of
our department.
Student
News
29 new
students were inducted into Pi
Mu Epsilon, Tennesse Beta Chapter, at the annual Mathematics Honors
Day. Tony
McDaniel serves as the President and Dan Veal as the President-Elect.
Lucas Van der Merwe is the faculty sponsor. At right is a picture of
some of the PME members.
Two of our students have spoken at recent conferences.
The Fourth Annual Harriett J. Walton Symposium on Undergraduate
Mathematics Research was held at Morehouse College in Atlanta on April
1, 2006. Shane Sawyer gave a talk on a project advised
by Matt Mathews called "Investigation of Spurious Waves in the Solution
of the Euler Equations with Discontinuous Initial Data." Tony McDaniel,
Cynthia Stark, Matt Matthews and Lucas Van der Merwe attended.
The 2006 national meeting of Pi Mu Epsilon was held at
the MAA
Mathfest in Knoxville, August 9-12, 2006.
Tony McDaniel gave a talk called "New Results in the Proof of the Four
Color Theorem."
Two of our students were selected for prestigious summer
programs.
Robert Griffin, a mathematics major, attended a summer
program at the
Institute
for Training in Biostatistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
over the Summer of 2006 where he completed two courses (Stat 541 -
Introduction to Biostatistics and Practicum in Biostatistics 546).
The website is located at
http://www.biostat.wisc.edu/trainingandstudentinfo/SIBS/index.htm.
Daniel Veal, President-Elect of Pi Mu
Epsilon, attended a summer program abroad. The program is a part of
DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch
Dienst) which is the German Academic Exchange Service. They have
hundreds of different
programs and scholarships; the one that Daniel participated in is
called RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering). Over 200
undergraduate students from North America (US and Canada mostly)
from all fields of science received scholarships to assist German PhD
students with their research. More information can be found at
www.daad.org.
Alumni News
Dan Umbarger (MEd 1980) has written a 109 page book on how
to teach logarithms titled Explaining
Logarithms, A Progression of Ideas Explaining an Important Mathematical
Concept. More information is available at www.mathlogarithms.com
.
Don Carson (BS 2002) is now working as a fixed income trader on Wall
Street.
Alumni, if you have not yet done so, please fill out and submit
our
Alumni
Information Form.
Questions or comments about the Department may be
addressed to Math-mail@utc.edu .
This Newsletter was created by Sharon Brueggeman (October 2006).
Last update: August 2007.
