Exceptional Student Activity

 

 

We have had remarkable recent success by our math major Jeremy Holden. Click HERE to read about it in detail!

 

(Jeremy’s accomplishments include having a paper accepted by the professional journal Discrete Mathematics). In addition, he has been accepted for a research position at DIMACS this summer (2009). Congratulations Jeremy!!!!

 

 

 

Successes of the Mathematics Department

 

 

The Norwich University Mathematics Department continues its tradition of outstanding teaching, scholarship and service. Several of our students have had achievements that went well beyond their normal academic requirements. Our students present at mathematics conferences. We compete in mathematics competitions of all kinds, including the popular “Integration Bee”. Many of our students and former students won prestigious competitive scholarships. Several faculty members of the Mathematics Department earned individual awards and honors. We will also highlight some of the new faculty members in our department. (See a picture of the math department.)

 

Other Exceptional Student Activity

 

Eight Norwich University mathematics majors, accompanied by Keith Brudnicki from Alumni Relations and Assistant Professor Darlene Olsen, traveled to the second annual Spuyten Duyvil Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (SDUMC) held at The College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York on Saturday, April 14, 2007.  This one day conference featured presentations by undergraduate students and faculty in mathematics and computer science from thirteen undergraduate institutions.

 

Seven NU students presented academic papers at SDUMC.  For more information about the conference itself, visit the conference web-site. Also visit a slide show of photographs from the conference.

 

Here is a summary of the presentations given by our students:

 

Rachel Brudnicki, a junior mathematics major presented “Understanding Sudoku Puzzles”.  She was advised by Professor Susan Diesel.

Brian Juskiewicz, a sophomore mathematics and electrical engineering major, presented “Analysis of RLC Circuits using Differential Equations”.  He was advised by Professor Darlene Olsen.

Joseph Landry, a junior mathematics and physics major, presented “Finding Patterns in Sporadic Physical Phenomena (Space Weather)”.  He was advised by Professor Gary Parker.

Kevin LeClair, a senior mathematics major, presented “Perplex Numbers”.  This was original work done with Professor Rob Poodiack.

Desislava Slavova, a sophomore mathematics and civil engineering major, presented “Applying Benford's Law”. She was advised by Professor Darlene Olsen.

Michael Zalewski, a sophomore mathematics and mechanical engineering major, presented “Dijsktra's Algorithm and the Shortest Route Problem”.  He was advised by Professor Ernie True.

Victoria Wilson, a sophomore mathematics and physics major presented “Reality vs. Relativity”.  She was advised by Professor Darlene Olsen.

 

The 5th annual integration bee was held on April 12, 2007. An incredible 45 students spent a Thursday evening working on integrals for prizes and for the fun of it. Congratulations to Stuart Schutta and Nataly Patino who took first and second prizes respectively. For more details about the 5th annual integration bee, click here. Also, see a slide show of photos from the competition itself.

 

Congratulations to Brian Juskiewicz for his achievement in the 67th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, on Saturday December 2nd 2006. Only the best mathematics undergraduates in the United States and Canada participate in this prestigious and grueling 8 hour event. The contest consists of questions that could require knowledge from anywhere in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum, and therefore, senior mathematics students have a significant advantage. For this reason, we are extremely proud of the performance of N.U. sophomore Brian Juskiewicz, who received an official rank of 1089 out of the 3640 students. This is even more impressive in light of the fact that many large schools have extensive training sessions to prepare for this contest. Indeed, most of the top finishers come from a relatively small list of universities (for example, 81 of the top 500 scores are from students at M.I.T., and another 45 are from Harvard). We are also very encouraged about the fact that 5 of our contestants this year were not seniors. We are already eagerly looking forward to next year!

 

For more about the competition itself and about our success in the previous year (the 2005 contest), please visit:  Math Competition Story, The Competition Site, and a Photo of Pres. Schneider's Prize Presentation.

 

Matthew Burger and John Waltour represented Norwich University and finished third at the first collegiate mathematics competition for the Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America (NESMAA) in November 2006. Congratulations! The contest was created and organized by Associate Professor Rob Poodiack of Norwich University. The contestants are teams of students.

 

In addition, Matt Burger and John Walthour presented the talk, “Vertex-magic total labelings”, based on work from their undergraduate mathematics research project, which was sponsored by NASA.

 

Three students presented talks at the N.U. Mathematics Colloquium Series. Each talk was based on the student’s senior seminar. The talks were as follows:

 

“On the Similarity of Jordan Forms of Nilpotent Matrices”, by Matthew Burger, on December 4, 2006;

“Vertex-magic total labeling”, by Min-Hsiu Cheng on Dec 6, 2006;

“Use of Perplex Numbers in Special Relativity”, by Kevin LeClair, on Dec 11, 2006.

 

Joseph Landry, Brian Juskiewicz and Aaron Arzamendi were the respective winners of the October, November and January installments of the U.S. National Collegiate Mathematics Competition. Joseph Landry has won the March installment. Waclaw Timoszyk, Associate Professor of Mathematics, is organizing the Norwich University participation in this contest. The U.S. National Collegiate Mathematics Championship will be held this year in San Jose California during MathFest 2007.

 

Mathematics majors Kathleen Smith, Anthony Francis and Timothy Phelps have all competed for, and were awarded very competitive scholarships through the Department of Defense Information Assurance Program and/or the Federal Cyber Service Scholarship.

 

For more information about these scholarships and programs, see DOD Information Assurance Site  and Cyber Service Scholarship Site.

 

Kathleen Smith co-authored a paper entitled, “Vertex-magic total labeling of multiple complete graphs”. This paper has been accepted for publication in the professional peer-reviewed mathematics journal, Congressus Numerantium. She has since graduated in May 2006 with a Double Major in Mathematics and Chemistry, and was awarded a Presidential Fellowship for exceptional performance.

 

Two of our other 2006 mathematics graduates presented talks at the Hudson River Mathematics Conference in April, at Westfield State College, as follows:

 

“Generating Functions 101”, by Anthony Francis; and

“Applications of Wavelets for Compressing and Filtering Data”, by Krenar Komoni.

 

Twenty-five students (and many more spectators) attended the fourth annual Norwich University Integration Bee last April. Surasak Maneesri won the top prize of a ticket to a Boston Red Sox game, including transportation. The other top finishers were Krenar Komoni and George Sawyer. There were numerous prizes, including student versions of Mathematica software. The contest is coordinated by Associate Professor Rob Poodiack. Everyone was a winner!

 

Faculty Awards, honors and promotions

 

Cathy Frey, Professor of Mathematics, was promoted to Dean of the School of Mathematics and Sciences at Norwich University. In addition, she was awarded a Category I DANA professorship for outstanding scholarship, service and teaching. Gaye Symington speaker of the Vermont House has nominated Professor Frey to the Vermont Commission on Women.  The Commission’s purpose is to help women achieve legal, economic, social and political equality in Vermont.

For more information on the commission please visit:

http://www.women.state.vt.us/

 

Rob Poodiack, Associate Professor of Mathematics, won the prestigious Homer L. Dodge Award. This award has been given every other year to only one professor from the entire University. In addition, he was awarded an Independent Study Leave to work for one term on Real Analysis at the University of Vermont.

 

For more about Poodiack’s honor, visit: 2005 Convocation Story.

 

Steve Wiitala, Professor of Mathematics, was awarded an Independent Study Leave which he used to work on statistical analysis in collaboration with Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Hitchcock medical center.

 

Gerard LaVarnway, Professor of Mathematics, was elected as Chair of the Norwich University Faculty Senate, and also as the new Chair of the Mathematics Department.

 

New Faculty

 

Jeffrey Olson will officially join the dept. in July as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics, after spending 2 years at Norwich as a lecturer. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His main area of expertise is advanced algebraic structures. He has numerous recent publications including:

 

1. “Subdirectly Irreducible Residuated Semilattices and Positive Universal Classes”, Studia Logica, Vol. 83, (1-3) (2006), pp. 393-406.

2. “Finiteness Conditions on Varieties of Residuated Structures”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois at Chicago, June 2006.

 

Elizabeth Mathai, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, joins our tenure track faculty after a very successful Visiting Position with us here at Norwich University. She also has teaching experience at the U.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore India, as well as the T. John College of Science and Arts in Bangalore. Her Ph.D. thesis was on mathematical models in thermodiffusive elasticity. She is also on the faculty of the Vermont Mathematics Initiative for the Masters Degree Program in Education with specialty in K-6 mathematics, offered by the University of Vermont.

 

Darlene Olsen, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, joins our tenure track faculty with teaching experience at St. Michael’s college as well as Johnson State College and the University of Vermont. She received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany, in Ergodic Theory. She has also worked at the New York State Department of Labor as a Statistician and Program Research Specialist.

 

 

Professional Faculty Activity

 

Gerard LaVarnway, Professor of Mathematics, published an article:

 

"A Characterization of Fourier Series of Stepanov Almost-periodic Functions" in the Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications (Springer). It can be viewed electronically at the Journal's web site.

 

He also presented a talk, “Who Wants To Be A Mathematician?” at the South Burlington High School Career/Job Expo in the Spring of 2006.

 

Professor True has been conducting research in the application of numerical models to the study of coastal ocean currents. The numerical models use the finite element method to approximate solutions to a system of partial differential equations that describe the tidal and non-tidal currents of the oceans. Currently, Professor True is working with colleagues from Dartmouth College and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to develop a real-time simulation of the currents in Casco Bay, Maine. He is a member of a users group of numerical modelers who hold workshops and conferences to share their work and present their results to others who are involved with modeling ocean currents, environmental protections and commercial fishing in the Gulf of Main.

 

Ted Marsden, Professor of Mathematics, is an integral member of the Vermont Mathematics Partnership. This is funded by a five year grant received from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. The grant to Vermont supports projects designed to help students meet the goals of federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation. He is a member of the team that has created courses offered to grades 5-8 mathematics educators. He is a member of the team responsible for instructing these courses.

 

Professor Marsden instructs and develops courses in the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, a program of professional development for elementary teachers. He is now writing (as co-author) mathematics content material that will form the text for two mathematics courses to be offered to elementary teachers in Vermont, with the first course to be offered at several sites in 2007.  

 

Professor Marsden is the co-developer of a mathematics contest designed for high school students in Vermont.  The Talent Search Contest, first offered in 1993, is an activity sponsored by the Vermont State Mathematics Coalition, and now has entries received by more than 500 students per year.

 

Rob Poodiack, Associate Professor of Mathematics, gave a contributed talk, "Circles, Diamonds and Squares: A New Trigonometry for a New Pi," at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, LA on January 8, 2007.  He also attended a short course in celebration of Leonhard Euler's 300th birthday.

 

Professor Poodiack also organized the first collegiate mathematics competition for the Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America (NESMAA) meeting in November, 2006.  Eight teams totaling 22 undergraduates tackled the contest problems.  The students came from all over the Northeast.  The competition should be an annual tradition at NESMAA fall meetings for years to come. Professor Poodiack also organized the contributed papers session of the Fall NESMAA meeting.

 

Dan McQuillan, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, presented the talk, “Vertex-magic and edge-magic total labeling of 2-regular graphs” at the 20th Midwest Conference on Combinatorics Cryptography and Computing at Wichita State University on October 5. He also presented a talk on the subject of graph labeling at the 37th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing at Florida Atlantic University in March 2006. He also served as an external reader for a doctoral dissertation on graph labelings at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

 
Professor McQuillan has three recent papers either accepted for publication, or appear in
print, as follows:
 
1. “Vertex-magic Total Labeling of Multiple Complete Graphs”, will appear in the journal, Congressus Numerantium (co-authored with Kathleen Smith).
2. “Edge-magic and Vertex-magic Total Labelings of Certain Cycles”, will appear in the journal, Ars Combinatoria.
3. “Vertex-magic Total Labeling of Odd Complete Graphs”, Discrete Mathematics, 305 (2005), pp. 240-249. (co-authored with Kathleen Smith).

 

Elizabeth Mathai, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, lectured on probably theory during a two-day VMI (Vermont Mathematics Initiative) session during Jan.12-13, 2007, at the University of Vermont. She also participated in a two day intensive session on October 27-28. During this session, both she and Professor Marsden provided instruction to K-6 mathematics teachers. The discussions allow the teachers to delve into new topics as well as deepening their understanding of familiar topics.

 

Darlene Olsen, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, gave a talk, “A Mathematician Working in a Nonacademic Position” to give career advice for undergraduate math majors interested in working as a statistician. This presentation was at the Spuyten Duyvil Undergraduate Mathematics Conference on April 14, 2007. She also served on a career panel.

 

In addition, she presented, "Mathematical Ties to Tying Neckties", at the Norwich University Mathematics Colloquium Series on November 14, 2006. She also presented the talk in January 2007 to three classes at Canaan High School, as part of the Expanding Horizons XI outreach program. In addition, she also attended the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, LA at the beginning of January.  

 

Cathy Frey, Professor of Mathematics, presented a talk on the subject of creating animated web pages for mathematics instruction at the 2006 Hawaii International Conference on Statistics, Mathematics and Related Fields.