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Kristi began teaching at the University of Central Oklahoma after graduating from the University of Arkansas. She teaches a wide range of courses, which include Mathematics for General Education, Calculus 1–3, as well as proof-writing courses, such as Foundations of Advanced Mathematics and Introduction to Analysis. Kristi is active in the Oklahoma-Arkansas Section of the MAA and has served as the Section Treasurer and the Section NExT Coordinator for several years. This past year, she began an outreach program to the PreK–20 mathematics community by creating a Math Teachers’ Circle. Kristi is grateful for the learning opportunities she has been given and is looking forward to continuing serving the mathematics community in the years to come.
The following appear in the order in which they were submitted.
Chris Francisco
Several OSU math faculty members received impressive honors in 2019: William “Bus” Jaco earned the Regents Distinguished Research Award, while Jay Schweig was honored with the Regents Distinguished Teaching Award. This marks the first time the department has won both awards in the same year. Jaco was also inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame in November. Igor Pritsker became the new Vaughn Foundation Professor in Number Theory in May. Henry Segerman, OSU math alumnus Michael Woodard, and their collaborator, Roice Nelson, won their division of the National Science Foundation’s “We Are Mathematics” video competition in the spring.
OSU math alumni and students also had a great year. In September, Ardoth Hassler was inducted into the OSU College of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, recognized for her outstanding career of over 40 years in academic computing. Chapman Howard, a senior in math and mechanical engineering, was recently named one of OSU’s Seniors of Significance. He is also this year’s Koslow Undergraduate Research Scholar, conducting research with Anand Patel. Carly Bender, a senior in the actuarial and financial math track, earned a Women for OSU scholarship for her community service. Hannah Webb, an OSUTeach student in her junior year, has excelled in and out of the classroom, establishing herself as an outstanding math student and a starter on OSU’s Big 12 champion soccer team. Finally, Nicki Boardman earned a Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, a very competitive award at OSU. She is finishing her doctorate in applied mathematics with Regents Professor Jiahong Wu.
In July, JaEun Ku was promoted to Professor, and Ed Richmond and Jay Schweig were promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Xu Zhang joined the OSU faculty as an Assistant Professor in fall 2019; he specializes in numerical analysis and scientific computing. Sean Curry, who works in several complex variables, is spending the year on leave at UC-Davis and will come to Stillwater as an Assistant Professor in fall 2020. David Ullrich retired in January 2020 after over 35 years on the faculty.
OSU is particularly excited to unveil its new corequisite mathematics instruction classrooms on the first floor of the Mathematical Sciences Building this spring. The two classrooms are set up to switch easily between an active learning setup and a lecture seating arrangement during the same class period, and they will provide a great boost to OSU’s ability to offer corequisite sections of four different classes in an environment ideally suited for corequisite instruction.
Frank Blume
In an effort to boost student numbers, the John Brown University Department of Mathematics introduced a mathematics-major emphasis option in actuarial science starting in the fall of 2019. The rationale for this initiative derives from the fact that actuarial science is well known to be one of the most lucrative career choices available to current-day college graduates. We are happy to report that three students are already enrolled in this new program and that one of them has already passed the first qualifying actuarial exam. Given this initial positive response, we hope to further increase the attractiveness of our degree programs by adding similar emphases in the near future in computer science and data analytics.
Sarah Marsh
Department Chair Cherith Tucker was awarded both Senior Faculty Status (OBU’s tenure equivalent) and promotion to Associate Professor during the 2018–19 academic year. Congratulations, Dr. Tucker!
Andrew Wells
This fall semester, the department of mathematics and computer science welcomed Dr. Jalal Atoum Omer as an assistant professor of computer science. We are excited to have him here. Dr. Robert Ferdinand, the department chair for the last few years, left East Central University for other employment, and we want to thank him for the nearly 20 years of work at our university and wish him all the best. Our new department chair is Dr. Mary Harper, and she has done a great job handling the transition.
Two faculty members in our department earned promotions last year. Both Dr. Nicholas Jacob and Dr. Michelle Lastrina started this fall semester at their new ranks of associate professors of mathematics. Also, this past year, Dr. Matt Lynam published a paper in
This year, we finalized all the paperwork related to Math Pathways and Corequisites so, starting in the fall of 2020, we will have all four pathways and corequisite courses attached to each one. The new Functions and Modeling class will serve business and nursing majors primarily. Over the summer, Dr. Nicholas Jacob also attended the MAA sponsored StatPrep workshop in Fort Worth and has been working on improving our entry-level statistics classes.
Three mathematics students presented research posters at the Fall technical meeting of the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences: Dineh Bohan, Nicole Beyer, and Ginger Johnson. Ginger Johnson also completed a Research Experience for Undergraduates at Oklahoma State University in Data Science.
Nicholas Zoller
The Southern Nazarene University (SNU) Math Club was busy over the past year. In March 2019, the Math Club held its yearly Pi Day party. In fall 2019, the Math Club hosted the second annual Tri-Mathlon and watched
Dr. Nicholas Zoller supervised several research projects over the past year. During the spring 2019 semester, Dr. Zoller supervised two senior research projects. Clay Brown applied game theory ideas to the conflict between NATO and some its adversaries (e.g., Russia and Iran). Caleb Merriott developed a winning strategy for the board game
In summer 2019, Dr. Zoller supervised two more research projects. Tristan Florence studied the ward boundaries for the City of Bethany, Oklahoma and developed new ward boundaries that are better in the sense that they have more equal populations. Joshua Crouch studied the properties of sum-difference numbers and extended previous results about sum-difference numbers into the context of modular arithmetic; the results have been submitted for publication.
In fall 2019, Dr. Zoller supervised two more senior research projects. Rachel Hurtz learned more about fuzzy logic in order to apply it to simulations of teams of robots working toward a common goal. Joshua Lessner gathered data about and studied the relationships between school expenditures and prison spending in each state.
In December 2019, 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; at least two students think that they earned positive scores.
In February 2020, Camron Bowman and Amanda Kinnamon participated in the COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The contest coincided with the Texas/Oklahoma Regional Undergraduate Symposium (TORUS). The Math Department took one faculty member and six students to TORUS. Tristan Florence presented the results of his summer research project on election districts at the conference.
James Fetterly and Ramesh Garimella
Three permanent faculty members were welcomed to the department in fall 2019: Mrs. Hailey Hurley and Dr. Garth Johnson joined the department as lecturers. Coming from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Lisa Skultety joined the department as an assistant professor in mathematics education.
With fourteen years of service to the Mathematics Department, Dr. Charles Watson retired as a mathematics educator. His dedication to teaching, research, and service to the students, colleagues, and the Arkansas academic community has benefitted countless numbers.
Dr. Danny Arrigo has been on staff in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) since 1999 and is currently a Professor of Mathematics. With over 30 journal articles and three books, his research interests include the construction of exact solutions of PDEs and symmetry analysis of nonlinear PDEs. This past year, Dr. Arrigo won the UCA’s Teaching Excellence Award. Dr. Arrigo integrates his research into his teaching and vice versa. He has worked with many students while at UCA; more than 30 of his undergraduate students have presented their work at regional and national conferences, where several have been recognized with awards. In addition to undergraduates, he has mentored at least ten graduate students.
The Mathematics Department honored several students for their outstanding achievement in various areas. The outstanding junior, Tara Mott, was presented with the Dorothy Long Award. The O.L. Hughes Award for math achievement, GPA, and leadership was received by Monica Davanzo. The Brenda Graham service award was granted to Madison Lager and Andie Weaver. Wesley Martsching was selected for The Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award; he is pursuing his doctorate at the University of Northern Colorado.
Narayan Thapa
Link to PDF for Cameron University
Carolyn Eoff
In fall 2019, the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics welcomed Tiffani Fugate as Instructor of Mathematics. Another of our instructors, Trae Warner, is working on a second master’s degree in statistics and is continuing to help our growing statistics program. One of our faculty members, Dr. Debra Coventry, was named Associate Dean but is still half-time in our department. Holly Morado was named assistant director of HSU’s concurrent credit program. Drs. Lloyd Moyo and Michael Lloyd supervised senior projects during the past year.
The HSU chapter of Kappa Mu Epsilon inducted eight students last spring.
Our co-requisite models for college algebra, statistics, and quantitative literacy have been successful, resulting in a significant number of students earning college mathematics credit more quickly.
A significant change is coming to our university, as we will become part of the Arkansas State University system in the relatively near future.