Please contact Michael Lloyd if you are interested in advertising in our newsletter.
The following appear in the order in which they were submitted.
James Fetterly and Ramesh Garimella
Sarah Marsh
Our department was excited to welcome Dr. Nathan Drake to OBU in Fall 2018. Dr. Drake comes to OBU most recently from Southern Nazarene University, where he served as an Associate Professor. He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from Clemson University in the area of Algebra.Nicholas Zoller
The Southern Nazarene University (SNU) Math Club was busy over the past year. In March 2018, it held its annual Pi Day party. They enjoyed a meal of pizzas and ice cream pies. They also participated in a digits-of-pi scavenger hunt. In fall 2018, the Math Club hosted a board games night, a math games night, and a math movie night. Plans for spring 2019 include making Math Club t-shirts and hosting another Pi Day party.
During the fall 2018 semester, Dr. Nicholas Zoller supervised two senior research projects. Aaron Couch studied numbers in balanced bases and how the square root algorithm behaves for balanced bases. Joshua Aguilar studied a model for play calling that can be used by football coaches to make in-game decisions as well as for post-game analysis.
In December 2018, Camron Bowman, Joshua Crouch, and Amanda Kinnamon participated in the annual William Lowell Putnam Exam. It was just as challenging as they thought it would be. They are eagerly awaiting the results later this year; there is hope that at least one student earned a positive score.
In January 2019, Amanda Kinnamon and Joshua Lessner participated in the COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling. They chose a problem that asked them to build a model to predict what demographic characteristics are associated with opioid use. It was frustrating to work with a large data set that also needed some cleaning, but they learned a great deal from the experience.
The Math Department is the host of the 2019 Texas/Oklahoma Regional Undergraduate Symposium (TORUS) on February 23, 2019. Several Oklahoma universities from the OK-AR Section will be represented this year. Invited guest speakers include Dr. Kristi Karber from the University of Central Oklahoma and Mr. Charles Armstrong, who is a retired NASA scientist. The highlight of the conference is presentations by students about their mathematical research.
The Math Department said goodbye to Dr. Nathan Drake in May 2018. Dr. Drake became a member of the Math Department in August 2016. He started a position in the Math Department of Oklahoma Baptist University in August 2018. His humor, his enthusiasm for the study of math, and his unique classroom presence are missed.
Narayan Thapa
Link to PDF for Cameron University
Chris Francisco
William “Bus” Jaco ended his seven years as head in July; he led the department’s Success in Undergraduate Mathematics initiative and brought substantial new resources into the department. He received OSU’s Eminent Faculty Award in 2017, the highest honor given to an OSU faculty member. Chris Francisco took over as head on July 1. Anthony Kable is serving as associate head, Lisa Mantini is continuing as Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Ed Richmond is the new Director of Graduate Studies.
In fall 2018, OSU welcomed one new Teaching Assistant Professor, Cynthia Francisco, who is redesigning and coordinating OSU’s math content courses for preservice elementary school teachers. The department also hired two new Postdoctoral Fellows, Matthew Mastroeni in commutative algebra and Zackery Reed in research in undergraduate mathematics education. Three faculty members, Jiri Lebl, Walter Rusin, and Henry Segerman, were promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2018. Chris Francisco was promoted to professor.
The department is particularly excited about a new NSF grant awarded in the summer of 2018 to Bus Jaco (PI), John Paul Cook, Allison Dorko, Michael Oehrtman, and Michael Tallman. The Mathematical Inquiry Project will bring together teams from throughout Oklahoma to develop consistent entry-level course objectives and active-learning modules for institutions in the state to share. The grant is for five years and $3 million.
Sadly, Professor Emeritus John Jobe passed away at the age of 85 on January 30, 2019. Dr. Jobe earned his Ph.D. from OSU in 1966 and was hired the same year as an assistant professor, serving on the faculty for nearly 30 years. He helped revitalize the graduate program during his time as Director of Graduate Studies, and he made outstanding contributions in teaching and service at OSU and to the Oklahoma-Arkansas section of the MAA. Dr. Jobe and his wife Caryl, winner of the Presidential Distinguished Teacher Award while a teacher at Westwood Elementary in Stillwater, generously funded the Jobe Graduate Fellowship to help recruit top math graduate students to Oklahoma State. We miss Dr. Jobe and his fun and lively conversations about basketball, math, and life, and we are grateful he was a part of our lives.
Farrokh Abedi
We are pleased to report that our student research program is thriving. During 2018, there were five undergraduate math majors engaged in various research projects.
Last year, undergraduate mathematics majors Allie Wynn and Rebekah Dewitt published a paper with their mentor Dr. Lynn Fox entitled “Identification of Noise Color on Compounded Audio Signals via an Infinite-Valued Logic System and Neuro Network Learning.” The paper was presented at NCUR – National Conference of Undergraduate Research, in Edmond, Oklahoma. Also, Allie Wynn with her mentor Dr. Fox presented a paper entitled “Classification of Noise Color on Distorted Audio Signals via an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System” at the 2018 MAA Regional Conference in Russellville, Arkansas.
Jimmy Atkins presented his paper, entitled “The Correlation between Mathematics and Music” at the 2018 MAA Regional Conference.
Ryan Myers is planning to present his paper entitled “An Introduction to Spatial Statistics” at the 2019 MAA Regional Conference in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Jimmy Atkins is also presenting the continuation of his paper, “Measuring the Symmetry of Sine Waves Produced by Music,” at the 2019 MAA Regional Conference.
Hayden Jumper will present his paper entitled “Fingerprint Analysis of Fatty Acids found in Algae” as a poster presentation in Little Rock, Arkansas on February 20.
After 16 years of dedicated service to the Mathematics Department, Dr. Charles Dolberry took a job at the Andrew College in Georgia to be near home. Both Charles and his wife, Carol, are from Alabama and are being greatly missed by their colleagues and the students. Carol was the Registrar at UAM; Charles has been a long-time member of MAA and attended all the MAA Regional Conferences during his tenure at UAM.
Dr. Lynn Fox was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Monticello in the spring semester of 2018. Lynn joined UAM faculty on August 2010. She received her Ph. D. from the University of Little Rock, Arkansas in applied mathematics, Masters of Education with an emphasis in mathematics from the University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM), and her undergraduate degree in mathematics from UAM.
Alan Gooding and Lura Sandlin joined our faculty in fall 2018 as instructors. Lura received her MSED from UAM and is taking online mathematics courses from UALR. Alan received his MAT from UAM. Alan and Lura are both former UAM mathematics major students.
Bill Coberly
Professor Emeritus Thomas Cairns died on November 4, 2018. Tom was a faculty member at the University of Tulsa for over 52 years and was a long-time participant in the Ok/Ark MAA Section. He earned his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics form OSU (Oklahoma A&M at the time) and, after a stint in the Army, earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from OSU under the direction of R. B. Deal. He is survived by his wife, Sharon and two children, Scot and Janet Cairns.
Jennifer Burleson, a mathematics and physics major at The University of Tula, was named a Goldwater Honorable Mention Scholar in 2018.