Adrian College [reported by Beth Lamprecht]
Cindy Bosio was awarded the Ross Newsom Award for Outstanding Teaching at Adrian's annual Fall convocation. • Beth Lamprecht is presently serving as chair of the mathematics department. • Jim Peters has been hired as an adjunct faculty member in the mathematics department. He holds a Master's degree from the University of Dayton. [elamprecht@adrian.edu]
Albion College [reported by Robert Messer]
The Math/CS Department at Albion C welcomes Harold Connamacher as our new computer scientist. He is finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in theoretical computer science. [ram@albion.edu]
Alpena Community College [reported by Dan Rothe]
The new Fall semester at ACC is off to a positive start with an increase in enrollment. • We are happy to have Meghan Cameron joining the mathematics department in a 6/10 position. She will be teaching Calculus I at the Huron Shores (Oscoda Campus). Brenda Kelley also joins the department as a Biology instructor. • We congratulate our 2005 Mathematics Award winner Rebecca Rasmussen. This award is given annually to our top Calculus student. The mathematics department is proud of her accomplishments. [rothed@alpenacc.edu]
Aquinas College [reported by Joseph Spencer]
After 41 years of service at Aquinas C, Sister Mary Catherine Brechting, O.P. has retired from the Department of Mathematics. Coincident with her retirement, we welcomes our first new full-time professor in six years, Yashowanto Ghosh. He earned his Ph.D. at Purdue three years ago; he is interested in all sorts of mathematics, especially number theory, analysis, and probability. • On September 15 Michael McDaniel spoke on StarLogo Turtles and Difference Equations for Calvin C's Colloquium series. • On September 24 Kathy Burgis spoke on the role of algebra in elementary school mathematics at the annual MichMATYC conference. • Aquinas C, in collaboration with Lansing CC, was awarded a state higher education grant to do mathematics professional development with a group of sixth grade teachers. These teachers will attend monthly workshops and intensive summer institutes focused on algebra. Kathy Burgis is co-director, along with Nan Jackson of Lansing CC. Other Aquinas mathematics faculty and students will also be involved in various aspects of the project, called MathARTS (Mathematics! Algebraic Reasoning for Teachers and Students). [SPENCJOS@aquinas.edu]
Calvin College [reported by Daryl Brink]
Jim Bradley has joined the administration as Director of Assessment and Institutional Research. Tom Scofield is on leave Fall semester at the U of Minnesota. Mike Stob is on sabbatical this year at Notre Dame U. Randy Pruim is back from a sabbatical at the U of Michigan Biostatistics Department. Gerard Venema is back after a sabbatical at MSU. Rikki Wagstrom has accepted a position of Asst. Prof. in the mathematics department at Metropolitan State U in St. Paul, Minnesota. [brkd@calvin.edu]
Central Michigan University [reported by James Angelos]
There were three retirements this past year: Robert Chaffer, Mitzi Chaffer, and David McDowell. Esther Beneish, Peter Vermeire, and Daniel Wang were promoted to Assoc. Prof. Beneish and Wang were also granted tenure. We have a visiting professor this year, Johnson Olaleru, a functional analyst from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Temporary assistant professors this year are: Ruben Aydinyan, algebraic coding theory, Iowa State U; Tsz Ho Chan, analytic number theory, UM, and Xinyun Zhu, algebraic geometry, Oklahoma State U. • Dan Maki, Indiana U, spoke in September, and Fritz Scheuren, President of the American Statistical Association spoke on campus to the MidMichigan ASA Chapter in October. • Azita Manouchehri, Doug Lapp, along with Ken Smith, Denny St. John, and Charles Vonder Embse, received a $1.07 million grant from the National Science Foundation that will in 5 years develop new curricula designed to train secondary teachers of mathematics. [angel1jr@cmich.edu]
Eastern Michigan University [reported by Tim Carroll]
Xiaoxu Han is a new faculty member. [timothy.carroll@emich.edu]
Ferris State University [reported by Jim Howard]
Hengli Jiao and Shaw Walker have been promoted to Assoc. Prof. Kent Sun, Mary Forintos and Griff McTume have received tenure. Enoch Lee left our Department to take a non-teaching position in the private sector. [JamesHoward@ferris.edu]
Hope College [reported by Todd Swanson]
We are happy to welcome Nathan Tintle to our Department. Nathan received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. • The seventh edition of Probability and Statistical Inference, co-written by Prof. Emeritus Elliot Tanis, was published earlier this year by Prentice-Hall • Also published, by the MAA, was Understanding our Quantitative World, written by Janet Andersen and Todd Swanson. [swansont@hope.edu]
Lake Superior State University [reported by Brian Snyder]
Brian Snyder has received tenure effective for the 2005-2006 academic year. • Kimberly Muller has been selected as an R. L. Moore Project NExT fellow for the 2005_2006 school year. • Sherilyn Duesing was announced as the 2005 recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award. The recipient of the award is revealed during commencement. [bsnyder@lssu.edu]
Lawrence Technological University [reported by Mike Merscher]
Guang-Chong Zhu has joined the department. • Glen Bauer was named 2005 recipient of the LTU Marburger Award for excellence. • Robofest, guided by CJ Chung, has gone international, with 527 participants from around the world in 2005. The World Robofest Championship 2006 will be held at LTU in May. • The 36th annual LTU Mathematics Competition for high school students was held in April, with first place going to Jeffrey Madsen of Birmingham Groves. Again this year the competition was supervised by Mike Merscher. [merscher@ltu.edu]
Michigan Technological University [reported by Lynn Murphy]
The following are new faculty at MTU: Todd King, Assoc. Prof., Stephen Roblee, Assoc. Prof., Ann Humes, Lect., Melissa Keranen, Lect. • Martyn Smith is new as Adj. Prof. • William Francis retired in June 2005 • Renfang Jiang was promoted to Full Prof. with tenure • Juergen Bierbrauer is on sabbatical for Fall 2005. • Fatemeh Emdad and Diane Mitchell are Visit. Instructors for the Fall. • Octavio Paez Osuna, from the National University in Mexico City, gave a colloquium for the Math Department on August 8 titled, "Attempts to Classify the STS(31) of 2-rank 27". • Huann-Sheng Chen received an NIH grant entitled "Mapping Complex Disease Genes Incorporating Age-at-Onset". Tom Drummer received an MDNR grant entitled "Developing a Sharp-tailed Grouse Monitoring Program in the Eastern Upper Peninsula" and an MDNR grant entitled "Construction and Evaluation of a Sightability Model for the Michigan Moose Survey". Igor Kliakhandler received an NSF grant entitled "Rayleigh-Taylor Instability". Vladimir Tonchev received an NSF grant entitled "Codes for Multiple-Access Channels, Genetic Testing, Deletion-Insertion Correction and Synchronization" and an NSA grant entitled "Classical and Quantum Codes". Shuanglin Zhang (PI), Huann-Sheng Chen (Co-PI), Jianping Dong (Co-PI), and Renfang Jiang (Co-PI) received an NIH grant entitled "Statistical Methods for Mapping Complex Disease Genes". [murph@mtu.edu]
Northern Michigan University [reported by Roxin Zhang]
Andrew Poe was tenured and promoted to Assoc. Prof. this year. Andrew is a computer scientist with expertise in parallel and sequential algorithms. He is also the coach of NMU's Computer Programming Team for the ACM North Central North America Regional Programming Contest. • Adam Baharum from the Science University of Malaysia as a visiting faculty in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science from May to September of 2005. He had been collaborating with faculty in this department on works in operations research. • The annual Fall MAA Upper Peninsula Meeting co-sponsored by the Michigan Section took place at Northern Michigan University on September 30 and October 1. This year's meeting had a session in which students from NMU, MTU, and LSSU learned about map-coloring on a torus by actually drawing maps using colored frosting on the surface of a donut. This activity was followed by a talk by Thomas Sibley of St. John's U in Collegeville, Minnesota in which he discussed the proof that seven colors suffice for map-coloring on a torus. Another invited talk was given by current Michigan Section Chair, John Fink of Kalamazoo C. Fink spoke on how to measure the degree of noncommutativity on groups such as the Heisenberg group. The program also included seven contributed short talks given by faculty and students from NMU, MTU and LSSU. • The NMU Invitational Computer Programming Contest is held each year at Northern Michigan University. Teams of three student programmers compete within five hours to complete a number of programs. Details of the contest and the past problems and solutions can be found at euclid.nmu.edu/~apoe/NMUCONTEST. [rzhang@nmu.edu]
Oakland University [reported by Jerry Grossman]
Tony Shaska has joined the faculty as Assist. Prof. He was a UM undergraduate, received his Ph.D. from the U of Florida in 2001, held positions at the U of California at Irvine and the U of Idaho, and works in computational algebraic geometry, Galois theory, algebraic curves and their applications. His first duty was to teach an experimental course last summer in cryptography. • Charles Cheng, Ravi Khattree, Alan Park, Ananda Sen, Jack Tsui, and Wen Zhang are on leave for all or part of the academic year. • Curt Chipman has begun a phase-out program, whereby he will teach only in the winter semester for three years and then retire for real (he joined OU in 1969). James Sochacki, on leave from the mathematics faculty at James Madison U in Virginia, has come to the area and teaches for us part-time. • The Oakland University Summer Mathematics Institute (see www.math.oakland.edu/ousmi.html) will be celebrating its tenth anniversary with its (free!) program this summer for local talented high school students. This year they will study Number Theory and Linear Algebra. The director, Eddie Cheng, is busy not only with that program but also as the new director of the MMPC. We are looking forward to hosting the Grading Day and Awards Day activities in the winter. • Serge Kruk chaired the university's Academic Conduct Committee last year and undertook a survey of student attitudes toward, and participation in, dishonest practices. The results were disturbing, with over 80% admitting to behavior that would warrant suspension if caught. He plans to publish the results. • See gauss.math.oakland.edu/colloquia.html for our colloquium schedule. [grossman@oakland.edu]
Saginaw Valley State University [reported by Tom Zerger]
Anthony Crachiola (Ph.D. from WSU, Algebra, Visiting Asst. Prof. at Loyola U in New Orleans) and Todorka Nedeva (Ph.D. U of Kentucky, Algebra and Number Theory) join us as Instructors. • Bing Liu and Tom Zerger were promoted to the rank of Prof. • Hasan Al-Halees received tenure and was promoted to the rank of Assoc. Prof. • The Annual SVSU High School Math Olympics Competition is tentatively scheduled for March 17. Details can be found at www.svsu.edu/mathematics/. [Zerger@svsu.edu]
Spring Arbor University [reported by Garnet Hauger]
Howard Thompson (currently at UM) will be joining the mathematics department at Spring Arbor in Fall 2006. [ghauger@arbor.edu]
University of Detroit Mercy [reported by John O'Neill]
We have a number of ongoing programs that expose students, grades 4-12, to math, science and engineering: Steps, Dapcep and the First Lego League. • On October 21 we held our annual Technology Discovery Day. About 800 high school students attended. Those interested in these events should contact Dan Maggio, maggiodd@udmercy.edu or 313-993-1435. • Nimet Alpay, a recent Ph.D. graduate from MSU, has joined our faculty as Instructor. • Abhijit Dasgupta has been promoted to Asst. Prof. [oneilljd@udmercy.edu]
University of Michigan-Dearborn [reported by F. J. Papp]
Timothy McKenna is publishing Class Notes for Precalculus with Thomson Higher Education for use with his recently published CD of the same name. The publishing date is slated for January 2006. These notes are for classroom use and follow the lectures on CD ROM that the instructors use. They are for the text Precalculus, 6th Edition by Cohen. Similar notes for Cohen's text Precalculus with Early Trigonometry, also will be published in January. • John Fink was promoted to the rank of Full Professor (with tenure) this year. • John Fink, Margret Höft, and Paul Lin were on sabbatical leave in Winter 2005. All three are now back on campus. David James is on sabbatical leave Fall 2005. • Ron Morash returned to full-time teaching after completing his term as associate dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters. He will be on sabbatical leave during the Winter 2006 term. • The National Science Foundation Scholarship grant (project director Margret Höft), which provided $400,000 in tuition money for qualified students, has been extended through calendar year 2006. [fjpapp@umich.edu]
University of Michigan-Flint [reported by Steven C. Althoen]
The 39th annual Math Field Day, a competition for high school students from throughout Michigan, will be held on February 28, 2006. Thirty-two teams registered for the competition in 2005; the team from Detroit Country Day won the championship. More information is available at www.flint.umich.edu/Departments/math/Field_Day. [salthoen@umflint.edu]
Wayne State University [reported by Daniel Frohardt]
Fatih Celicker (Ph.D., U of Minnesota) is a new Asst. Prof. He is spending this academic year on leave to do postdoctoral work at Stanford U. His specialty is applied mathematics. • Xuejun Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Haijun Wu of Nanjing University, Nanjing, China will each visit the department for a semester this year. They both work in the field of computational mathematics. • Po Hu has been awarded tenure and promoted to Assoc. Prof. • Robert Bruner has received a Faculty Recognition Award from the Wayne State University Board of Governors. • Peter Malcolmson is on sabbatical leave for the year. Stephen Williams is on sabbatical this semester. • Rafail Khasminskii, Claude Schochet, T. C. Sun, and Zhimin Zhang will have sabbatical leaves in Winter, 2006. • Jose-Luis Menaldi will be spending the next two winter semesters at the University of Parma, Italy. Gregory Bachelis is on leave this Fall. • Robert Berman is still on a leave of absence to work in the Provost's office. • Ken Davidson of the U of Waterloo will be the Visiting Scholar for the Fall Term. During his stay on campus he will give a colloquium talk on November 14. The department's colloquium schedule is at www.math.wayne.edu/research/seminars/colloq.html. • Seven students received doctoral degrees from the department earlier this year. • Several WSU students will participate in the Undergraduate Research Conference at UM-Flint in October. • In response to a change in the university's general education requirements the department is developing a new course, MAT 1000, Mathematics in Today's World. The course will be offered for the first time in Winter, 2006. • With the opening of a third new dormitory, the Towers Residential Suites, the number of students living on campus has increased by nearly 1800 students in the past four years. • Several students from institutions in the New Orleans area have enrolled at WSU for the Fall Semester. [danf@math.wayne.edu]
Western Michigan University [reported by Christine Browning]
Terrell Hodge is our new interim department chair. • Laura Van Zoest and Ping Zhang were both promoted to Prof. Terrell Hodge and Annegret Paul were both promoted to Assoc. Prof. and earned tenure. • The Midwest Optimization Conference was held October 14-15 on Western's campus. [christine.browning@wmich.edu]
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