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Mathematics Newsletter 1997-1998

Contents:

View From The Headship

Hermann Flaschka

This year's newsletter again describes the Department's many and varied activities. In my first column as Head, in the 1997 issue, I remarked on the social and political climate that is pushing mathematics departments across the country in new and, for many, unfamiliar directions. Trends in National Science Foundation funding provide one illustration of the changing emphases: there is increasing insistence on outreach, educational activities, integration of teaching and research, interdisciplinary efforts, and preparation for non-academic careers.

Our Mathematics Department has supported a broad view of its mission longer than most others, and the process of adaptation and experimentation continued this year on many fronts. The Department a year or two from now might be very different from the one you would have known just a few years ago, thanks to the many projects in various stages of development. Some examples:

  • As of fall 1998, no more Math 116 (Intermediate Algebra); incoming freshmen are expected to be better prepared thanks to increased high school math requirements.
  • A substantially revised Business Math sequence (119-123) will be offered on an experimental basis next year; the course design is led by R. Thompson (Math) and C. Lamoreux (Finance).
  • Under Dan Madden's leadership in the recently created position of "Calculus Czar", there is a multi-pronged effort to define basic standards and assess student learning (including, for instance, common final exams).
  • Statistics courses, long the responsibility of the Department of Statistics, returned to Mathematics in 1996. Our statisticians have been very busy transferring and redefining courses, setting up computer lab projects, and starting a colloquium series.
  • Our undergraduate research activity is expanding; participating students receive stipends from research grants and departmental funds. Starting in the fall, first-year graduate students will be introduced to mathematics research, following the Research Tutorial Group model pioneered by the Program in Applied Mathematics.
  • Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, jointly, are designing a new Master of Science option aiming to prepare students for non-academic employment. This will likely become integrated with a College of Science initiative to build connections with industry.

This list is only a small sample - our web page, being reconstructed and augmented, gives much more information about teaching and outreach.

Department members continue to be recognized for their achievements. At the risk of overlooking many other accomplishments, I wish to congratulate Bill Velez (University Distinguished Professor and Presidential Award For Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring); Fred Stevenson (MAA Southwestern Section Distinguished Teacher and College of Science Distinguished Advisor); John Brillhart and U of A Alumnus Pat Morton (MAA Lester Ford Award).

The success of teaching, curriculum innovation, and outreach ultimately is determined by the scholarship of the students and faculty members involved. The "Weekly News" seminar listings on our web page give a hint of the vibrancy and diversity of our research. I can't list all the national and international invitations and the individual grants and projects, but would like to mention three very recent developments that promise to have significant impact on several research groups. The arithmetic algebraic geometers (Kim, McCallum, Thakur, Ulmer) led a multi-university proposal, funded by NSF, that will support conferences, postdocs, student activities, and collaboration. Michael Tabor, Head of Applied Mathematics, directs an ambitious program aiming to develop collaboration between biological and mathematical scientists; Mathematics faculty members play a significant role. Jerry Moloney has initiated a research partnership with a semiconductor company. These endeavors continue the Department's traditional strategy of building on, and outward from, existing strengths.

The coming year will surely be exciting (and challenging) as our new projects gain momentum. I hope to have good things to report a year from now.


Left to Right:
John Costello, Kevin Gross, Hermann Flaschka, Craig Savage, Dmitry Kondrashov

Applied Math Colloquium

Kathleen Leick

On-line Seminar and Colloquia Info

Here are the speakers, their affiliations, and the titles of their talks.

  • Richard M. Murray (CalTech): Nonlinear Control of Lagrangian Systems
  • Yoshitsugu Oono (University of Illinois): Renormalization Group and Asymptotics
  • Charles Meneveau (The Johns Hopkins University): Turbulence, Scale Invariance, and the Modeling of Small Eddies
  • Amitava Bhattacharjee (University of Iowa): Finite-Time Singularity In A High-Symmetry Euler Flow : Neil J. Gunther (Performance Dynamics Company): Parallel Processing In Pictures
  • Hannah Rasmussen Rhodes (Cray Research): Working in the High Performance Computer Industry
  • Sijue Wu (University of Iowa): Well-Posedness in Sobolev Spaces of the Full Nonlinear Water Wave Problem
  • Abel Klein (UC Irvine): Localization of Light and Other Classical Waves
  • Fred L. Bookstein (University of Michigan): Biometrics and Brain Maps: A Toolkit of New Geometrical-Statistical Method
  • Frank Merle (Universite de Cergy-Pontoise, MSRI Berkeley): Uniform Estimates & Profile for Nonlinear Diffusion Equations
  • Adriana I. Pesci (University of Arizona): More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Leaky Faucets
  • Oscar P. Bruno (Caltech): Shape Deforming Phase Transitions in Solids: Energetics and Pseudoelasticity
  • Russell J. Donnelly (University of Oregon): Turbulent Flows at Cryogenic Temperatures: A New Frontier
  • James Powell (Utah State University): Mathematics of Mass Attack: Modeling And Analysis of Mountain Pine Beetle/Pine Ecology
  • Dave Peckham (Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Inc.): The Evolution Of Optical Fibers For Telecommunications
  • Jane Wang (Courant Institute): Computation of Insect Flight
  • Robert J. Adler (Technion, Israel, University of North Carolina): Interacting Particle Systems and a Stochastic Burger's Equation
  • Peter Wittwer (University of Geneva, Switzerland): A User's Guide to Computer-Assisted Proofs in Analysis
  • Robert M. Miura (University of British Columbia, National Institutes of Health): Analysis Of Models for Bursting Electrical Activity in Cells
  • Dieter Armbruster (Arizona State University): Dynamics Of The Geodynamo
  • Norbert Mauser (Berlin Technical University, Courant Institute): From the Dirac Equation to the Pauli, Schroedinger, and Vlasov Equations
  • Sharath S. Girimaji (ICASE at NASA Langley): Behavior of Velocity Fluctuations in Rapidly Rotating Flows
  • Bruno Nachtergaele (UC Davis): Recent Progress in Quantum Lattice Models with Interfaces
  • Satish Reddy (Oregon State University): On Transition to Turbulence in Plane Channel Flows
  • James C. Browne (University of Texas at Austin): Computational Infrastructures For Parallel Implementations Of Adaptive Algorithms

ACMS

Jerry Moloney

The Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences (ACMS) was originally funded in 1986 under the University Research Initiative (URI) national competition. The Center is a research arm of the Mathematics Department and is located on the second floor of the Economics building near Old Main. The entire budget for operating the Center is derived from funding won under competitive research grants. The Mathematical Sciences division of the Air Force Office for Scientific Research (AFOSR) has been the primary source of funding for the Center. Other funding agencies include the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The Center has ties to a local high power semiconductor laser manufacturer, Opto Power Corporation, and the latter company has applied for a patent on a new laser design developed by ACMS researchers.

Center faculty come primarily from the Mathematics Department (Ercolani, Indik, Lega, Levermore, Moloney, Newell, Pomeau, and Zakharov) and from the Optical Sciences Center (Wright, Binder). External regular visitors include N. Bloembergen (Harvard) (Nobel Laureate in Physics 1981), S.W. Koch (Marburg, Germany)(winner of Germany's Leibnitz Prize in Physics in 1996) and J. McInerney (University College Cork, Ireland).

The primary goal of the Center has been to provide an environment for research and learning in the Mathematical Sciences. Basic research themes currently include the modeling, understanding, and applicability of nonlinear processes in optics, fluids, plasmas, and biological systems, with continuing investigations into pattern dynamics, nonlinear stability, low dimensional chaos, turbulence, dynamical systems, and the nature of integrable systems of differential equations. Research takes place at all levels. There is long-range ongoing research with a strong multidisciplinary flavor, which reflects the unique admixture of skills of Center faculty, colleagues with regular visiting arrangements, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. Second, there are collaborations with colleagues from other universities, Air Force research centers, and industry. Thirdly, the Center hosts a regular Nonlinear Optics Workshop each Fall which is attended by applied mathematicians nationwide and from overseas. In addition, the weekly applied mathematics PDE, modeling, biomathematics, and fluids seminars are held at the Center.

The Center promotes learning through research. The breadth of activity and spectrum of interest and talent among Center faculty and visiting colleagues serves to stimulate interdisciplinary work and promote the cross-fertilization of ideas. Over the past 5 years, the Center has graduated, or is about to graduate, Ph.D. students in Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Optical Sciences. The multi-disciplinary mix of faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students serves to break down the traditional cultural barriers which separate disciplines.

Concern over the severe shortage of high quality students entering Mathematics and the Sciences, in general, has led Center faculty to establish a pilot "Research Experience for Undergraduate Students" project. Over the past year, 6-8 undergraduates have been supportedprimarily by stipends from research funds (one student was supported directly by the Department). This project is designed to expose motivated undergraduates to a research experience by augmenting their classroom materials through special topics lectures, and one-on-one mentoring by faculty and graduate students. The theme of the ongoing project is dynamical systems theory with applications to chaos, synchronization of chaotic dynamics, and control of semiconductor lasers. Sophomores Robert Thompson and Chris Bergevin gave poster presentations of their research projects at the recent AMA meeting in Tucson. Their posters were on display during the recent Math Awareness week activity. In addition, Center faculty have been instrumental in running an international summer school in Cork, Ireland over the past three summers. This school, supported by NSF and the European Community. was geared to teach beginning Ph.D. students, from applied science fields, the essential mathematical skills needed to analyze nonlinear problems.

The Center is responsive to the changing face of research funding, seeking to apply modern developments in mathematics to critical areasin the applied basic sciences or emerging technology areas. The mode of investigation combines analysis, large scale or interactive graphical supercomputing, and direct feedback from real-world experiments. Specialized research facilities include a multi-processor Silicon Graphics ONYX2 graphics supercomputer and a 4-processor Silicon Graphics Power Challenge machine. These provide the capability of interrogating or intervening in, in real-time, the complex evolving solutions to nonlinear partial differential equations. Faculty are currently involved in projects to design better high power semiconductor lasers, to exploit the high dimensional chaotic dynamics of such lasers in order to explore novel means of achieving speed-of-light high bandwidth communications, studying the propagation of intense femtosecond (10-15 second) duration laser pulses through the atmosphere, studying bioconvection in colonies of bacteria, and modeling turbulence and pattern formation as universal phenomena in fluids, optics, and biological systems. An important discovery made by ACMS researchers over the past year, for example, has been the role of the well known collapse singularity of the two-dimensional nonlinear Schroedinger equation, in establishing and sustaining a novel intense nonlinearly self-guided light channel in air. Normally, this self-similar collapse singularity solution wreaks havoc in optical systems leading to catastrophic material damage. However, ultrashort laser pulses have very low energies ( but enormous peak intensities) and they can generate, in a controlled fashion, very short plasma filaments. These short filaments of free electrons are like conducting wires and it has been proposed to use these to redirect lightning strikes, thereby protecting sensitive equipment, during severe storms. It has been demonstrated recently that such laser pulses can propagate up to 12 kilometers vertically in the atmosphere and can be used in remote sensing to detect various chemical species and pollutants. Such problems offer fascinating challenges to applied mathematicians and physicists alike.

Brown Bag Update

Orna Amir

On-line Seminar and Colloquia Info

As always, it's been an exciting year of brown bags - brown bags being the two huge bagel-filled bags I bring to the math building each Friday. The delicious bagels (in the brown bags) are supplied by the Applied Math Program and allow us, the graduate students, to have a great time each Friday learning about each others' research. This year's talks have all been interesting and for the most part understandable; a fact that makes this Student Seminar one of the best attended seminars in the department (apart from the bagels of course).

Most of the talks have been related to the students' research, while others have explained funky topics the student felt like learning about just for the heck of it. Some talks have ventured further from the traditional path a little to explore issues such as job hunting and other talks have ventured much much further to discuss body building and cricket. In case you had to miss any or all of this excitement, here is a list of the year's events.

  • Karl Bauer: Super Resolution Through Error Energy Reduction
  • Brian D. Walton: Factoring Large Numbers Using a Quantum Computing Algorithm
  • Angel Pineda: Modeling the BIAcore (or, What I did while at Los Alamos )
  • Dan Coombs: Traveling Salesman Problem and Related Topics
  • Anu Rao and David Ropp: An Introduction to Resumés and CV
  • Jung Woo: Percolation
  • Brandon Gallas: Detectability (Ideal and Human) for a Lumpy Background Model as a Function of Background Parameters
  • Brooke McGuire: Theoretical Prediction of Maximal Oxygen Consumption for Skeletal Muscle
  • Orna Amir: Mathematics Underground
  • Stephen Shipman: Discrete WKB Analysis
  • Jeff "Iron Man" Edmunds: Limits of Continuous Human Growth Processes
  • Chris Wiggins: Supercoiling Dynamics of Twisted Elastica at Low Reynolds Numbersn
  • Dan Coombs: The Lives of Infinitely Long Small Wiggly Slow Things
  • Kevin Anderson: An Introduction to Black-Scholes Equations
  • Craig Hyde: Exponentially Small Separatrix Splitting in Rapidly Forced Dynamical Systems
  • David Ropp: Aspects of Finite Elements for Fluids
  • Gema Mercado: Microwave Heating
  • John S Costello: Iterated Function Systems and Fractal Image Compression
  • Marco A. Herrera Valdez: Options and Dynamic Optimization
  • Jesus Adrian Espinola Rocha: Leapfrogging Solitons
  • Karl Haller: The Basics of Bose Einstein Condensation
  • Orna Amir: Transient Flow in a Heterogeneous Porous Medium
  • Anu Rao: Primordial Thin Atmospheres
  • Regan Murray: How To Relax ( when you encounter equations with stiff reaction terms)
  • David Marsden and Dan Coombs: Determining the Nature of the Googly

The Co-Op Class of 1997-98

Elias Toubassi

This year the Co-op program has seven participants, six from Tucson area high schools and middle schools and one from Pima Community College. The group consists of Ken Bucholtz, St. Gregory's College Preparatory School; Scott Collins, Pima Community College, West Campus; Jose Fonseca, Wakefield Middle School; Pamela Keane, Desert View High School; Jeff Krause, Palo Verde High School; Carole Locklear, Cholla High School; and Fernando Rendon, Tucson High Magnet School.

Ken Bucholtz grew up in Chicago. He attended Western Illinois University and graduated from Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska. While at Concordia Ken played basketball and baseball. He began his teaching and coaching career at Martin Luther High School in Queens, New York, in 1978. He received his Master's degree in education from Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois in 1985. While working on his Master's degree he coached the Concordia basketball team. In 1986 he moved to Arizona to take a teaching and coaching position at St. Gregory's High School. In 1992 he participated in the PRISM Program. For four years prior to that he served as Mathematics Department chairperson at St. Gregory's.

Scott Collins grew up in Columbia, Maryland. He earned a Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute where he minored in English Literature. He worked for NASA at several research installations before moving to Arizona to begin a teaching career at Pima Community College in 1990. Scott has been teaching math and engineering full time at West Campus for the past three years. His hobbies include playing indoor soccer, mountain biking, and woodworking, but his passion is for white water kayaking, rock climbing, and mountaineering.

Jose Fonseca received his Bachelor's of Science in the teaching of mathematics from Guerrero University in Mexico. He taught mathematics in Sonora, Mexico, for 18 years at several high schools and the University of Sonora. He earned a Master's degree from the University of Arizona in Education. He has been involved in several projects aimed at improving the teaching of mathematics. He has been teaching at Wakefield Middle School in TUSD since 1995. While at Wakefield he has developed a project called "Build Your Own Dream Home" to motivate the learning of mathematics by Hispanic students. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Education with a minor in mathematics.

Pamela Keane started her undergraduate work at The University of Arizona in 1985. At the beginning of her senior year she transferred to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. There she completed her BS degree in applied mathematics in 1990 and her Master's in secondary education in 1992. Pamela has taught high school mathematics since 1991 in various roles: she has served as a regular teacher, a substitute teacher, and a tutor in three states: New Mexico, California, and Arizona. Since 1994 she has taught at Desert View High School in the Sunnyside School District. One of her teaching assignments at Desert View is calculus from the Consortium text. Pamela enjoys reading, skiing, and needlework in her free time.

Jeff Krause was born and raised in Allentown, PA. He received his BS degree from The University of Arizona in 1989 in mathematics education, with a minor in physics. During the past seven years he has been teaching at Utterback Middle School. During that time he kept working on his Master's degree in education with a mathematics emphasis which he completed in 1996. Next year Jeff will start a new teaching assignment at Palo Verde Engineering Magnet High School. One of his duties at Palo Verde will include teaching a class which will survey different engineering fields. The focus will be setting up and running a hydroponic system in a hothouse. In 1993 Jeff participated in the PRISM Program. He is married to Cassandra, who is a writer/teacher. They have three children - Amanda, Alex, and David.

Due to her father's airforce career, Carole Locklear has lived in several southern states. She moved to Tucson in 1963 and attended Palo Verde High School. She attended The University of Arizona and earned her Bachelor's degree in Russian and Mathematics in 1970. She started her teaching career at Chaparral Junior High School and then moved to Cholla Magnet High School where she has spent the past 13 years. During this time she worked on her Master's in bilingual multicultural education, which she earned in 1994. She has been involved in the North Central Association Accreditation Program and the Cholla bilingual program. Carole was a participant in the PRISM Program in 1991. Her free time is spent with her family doing outdoors activities such as camping, walking, and horseback riding. In the past she has raised animals, such as airedales, pigs, rabbits, and steers. Currently, she has five horses and two puppies. Carole enjoys learning and always has a list of classes that she wants to take.

Fernando Rendon was born and raised in tropical Colombia in South America. He graduated from high school in the United States as an exchange student. He then returned to Colombia to earn an Associate degree in mechanics and a Bachelor's degree in business administration. His work experience includes being a risk engineer at an insurance brokerage firm and a plant controller for a large glass manufacturing company. He moved to Tucson in November 1984. He continued his education at the University of Phoenix where he received his Master's in business administration in March 1988. He began his mathematics teaching career at Tucson High Magnet School in August 1988 and has been there until the present. Fernando is the fourth Co-op participant this year to have been part of the PRISM Program. His personal interests include working with computers, woodworking, and "The X-Files". He is married to Patricia Rendon, who is a TUSD educator at the elementary level. The Rendons have two daughters, Ana (21), and Elena (19).

Entry Level Mathematics Colloquium

Richard B. Thompson

On-line Seminar and Colloquia Info

The Entry Level Mathematics Colloquium, now in its forth year of operation, is sponsored by the Entry Level Committee and is presented jointly with the Mathematics Instruction Colloquium. Its purpose is to present mathematical topics that are of interest to, and understandable by, those teaching our 100 and 200 level courses.

In 1997-98 the Entry Level Mathematics Colloquium presented a series of nine talks by entry level faculty members, co-op faculty, and regular faculty members. The programs used mathematical tools including simple arithmetic, complex numbers, matrices, Pascal's Triangle, tilings, graphs, the Euclidean Algorithm, and cryptography.

A variety of presentation methods were used, ranging from computer graphics to chalkboard writing. Bill Mueller gave his presentation dressed in the period costume of a nineteenth century professor.

Speakers and topics included the following.

  • Richard Thompson; "Complex Numbers, 2 x 2 Matrices, Quaternions, and Vector Analysis: William Rowan Hamilton, Arthur Cayley, and Josiah Willard Gibbs."
  • William Mueller; "Dusting Off Mathematical Models: Mathematics Education Reform in Nineteenth Century America."
  • Steve Wheaton; "Pascal's Triangle Modulo Various Integers."
  • Scott Collins; "Connect the Dots and Count on your Fingers and Toes."
  • Edward Alexander; "Tilings: A Short and Gentle Introduction to the Mathematics of Covering Kitchen Floors - Exotically."
  • Kate McGivney; "Voronoi Diagrams and Delaunay Triangulations."
  • Andrew Winsberg; "An Introduction to Graph Theory, with Applications to Classical Mind Teasers."
  • Bryce Hanlon; "Cryptography."
  • Scott Collins; "Mathematics goes to the Carnival."

The entire series of talks was well-received, with an average attendance of over twenty people at each presentation.

Faculty News

Larry Grove

Ever onward and upward.

In 1997-98 William Yslas Vélez was named a Distinguished University Professor, acknowledging outstanding teaching and mentoring activities, and carrying a $5000 salary increase. He also received a national Presidential Award of Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, which he collected at the White House in Washington in September 1997. Finally, he was a recepient of a U of A Alumni Association Centennial Achievement Award.


Fred Stevenson received the Faculty of Science Outstanding Advisor Award, and also the MAA Southwestern Section Distinguished Teacher Award.

After devoting ten distinguished years as Associate Head for Graduate Studies, Marty Greenlee has returned to full time teaching and research. He has been replaced by L Grove, who is struggling to learn the first tenth of the mass of Graduate College detail that Marty had mastered.

Minhyong Kim was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Several faculty members were on leave - Lenny Friedlander in Vienna, Jiang-hua Lu in Hong Kong, John Palmer in Tucson, Doug Ulmer mainly at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Maciej Wojtkowski in Warsaw, Jack Xin at the Courant Institute in New York, and Vladimir Zakharov at the Landau Institute in Moscow.

Toniann Pitassi of the Computer Science Department accepted a joint appointment in Mathematics. She will be a featured speaker at the upcoming International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin in August 1998.

During a temporary absence, and by an overwhelming majority vote, Greg Eyink received the coveted Derelict-of-the-Year Award.

Kirti Joshi of the Tata Institute in Bombay is the current Rund Visiting Assistant Professor, and Eugene Xia of the University of Maryland is the Pierce Visiting Assistant Professor.

Other distinguished visitors during the past year include Joerg Hader of Marburg, Germany; Shandelle Henson, Lisa Holden of Wesleyan College in Georgia; Gabriele Inglese of the Instituto di Analisi Globale et Applicazione (Florence); Martin Juras of Utah State University; Megan Kerr of Wellesley College; Kevin Kremeyer; Yih-siang Liow of the University of Illinois; Klaus Lux of the Technical University in Aachen, Germany; Jean-Francois Mercier of Service de Physique Theorique (France); Bill Mueller, who is moving on to Salem State College in Massachussetts; Thomas Roessler of Arizona State University; Michael Trosset of Rice University, who is moving on to the College of William and Mary; and Ewan Wright of Optical Sciences.

We have three new regular faculty members. Thumbnail bios follow.

Joceline Lega was born and raised in Nice, in the south of France, where she earned a high school baccalaureate degree and continued with two years of preparatory study for undergraduate work at the L'ecole Normale in Paris. She returned to Nice and completed a Ph.D. in Physics under the direction of Pierre Coullet in 1989. Her dissertation was "Topological Defects Associated with the Breaking of Time-Translational Invariance".

She then accepted a research position at the French National + Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She maintains an affiliation there, but is currently on leave. She first came to The U of A in a post-doctoral position to work with Alan Newell in 1990 for a year, and continued on to teach for another semester. She returned during Spring semesters 1995-1997 as a Visiting Assistant Professor, and became a regular Assistant Professor in the Fall of 1997.

Joceline is an avid hiker and photographer. She is married to Nick Ercolani. You can learn more about her at her web page - http://math.arizona.edu/~lega.

Kenneth McLaughlin was born in Bloomington, Indiana. He came to Tucson at the age of five, when his father, Dave McLaughlin, joined the U of A Mathematics Department. Ken grew up in Tucson and graduated from Amphitheatre High School.

He went on to a bachelor's degree and then a Ph.D. from NYU in 1994. His Ph.D. dissertation was entitled "A Continuum Limit of the Toda Lattice", supervised by Percy Deift. He spent two years in a post-doctoral position at Ohio State, and was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton in 1996-97. In the Fall of 1997 he joined us as an Assistant Professor, and spent the Spring of 1998 again visiting Princeton. His current research interests involve applications of integrable techniques to random matrix theory and orthogonal polynomials.

Ken is married to Maria Theresa Tostes-Ribeiro McLaughlin.

Juan Restrepo ws born in Bogota, Colombia, but received his primary education in New York City and New Jersey, then returned to Bogota for 6th through 12th grades. He worked his way through college as a practicing musician (arranging, writing film scores, etc) and received an undergraduate degree in music from NYU, also having studied composition and conducting at the Juilliard School. Somewhere along the way he bought a copy of Thomas's Calculus on the street for 50 cents, and read it from cover to cover.

Having decided to study acoustics and signal processing he applied to graduate school in electrical engineering at Columbia University. During his two years there he took a course in PDEs from our own Michael Tabor. He transferred to Penn State when they began a program in the mathematics of fluid mechanics, and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics and physics in December 1992. His advisor was Jerry Bona . . . his dissertation A Model for Continental Shelf Sandbars.

He accepted a postdoctoral position at the Argonne National Laboratory from 1993-96, where he developed further his interests in numerical analysis, scientific computing, nonlinear dispersive waves, and climate change. He then spent two years at UCLA before coming to The U of A in the Fall of 1997 as an Assistant Professor.

Juan was responsible for the acoustic design of a 600 seat auditorium at the Argonne Lab, and another auditorium in Colombia. He is married to Kirstin Sparkman. Check out his web page at http://www.math.arizona.edu/~restrepo/.

Graduate Colloquium

Susan Hammond

On-line Seminar and Colloquia Info

The graduate students have continued the now six-year tradition of the graduate student colloquium. Each week graduate students give talks, ranging from practice oral exams to learning how to solve the Rubik's cube (mathematically, of course!). The colloquium provides a forum for students to practice presenting mathematics to their peers, an essential skill for a mathematician. It also allows students to see, at an accessible level, the broad range of mathematics being studied by fellow students here at the U of A.

This year's grad colloquium was organized by Alexander Perlis and myself. We would like to thank all our speakers for a great job. We would also like to thank Guadalupe Lozano, David Marshall, and the business office for their help with the ever-popular refreshments.

This year's speakers were:

  • Wayne Hacker: "Hunting for the kdv Equation in Shallow Water"
  • TV and VCR: "Videos: Math Careers, Women in Industry"
  • Aaron Ekstrom: "Elliptic Pseudoprimes"
  • Alexander Perlis: "Was sind und was sollen die Elliptischen Kurven?"
  • Robert Maier: "Random Matrices, On the Average"
  • Seog-Young Kim: "Binary Permutation Polynomials over Finite Fields"
  • David Marshall: "Taxicabs and Sums of Two Cubes"
  • Sang-Yook An: "How to Determine the Minimal Weierstrass Equation of an Elliptic Curve"
  • Seog-Young Kim: "The Classification Problem in Surfaces"
  • Jeff Edmunds: "Fractal Dimension for a Chaotic Attractor"
  • Alexander Perlis: "Automata, Languages, and Grammars"
  • Scott Lietz: "Rubik's Mania: You can fix the cube using Math?!"
  • Greg Gillis: "Design Considerations in Manufacturing Composite Conductors: Investigations in Percolation Theory"
  • Guadalupe Lozano: "The Schreier Conjecture and k-trans-itivity"
  • Jason Belnap: "A Touch of Class: Determining the Ideal Class Group of a Number Ring Using the Minkowski Bound and the Class Number Formula"
  • Susan Hammond: "Categories, Functors, and Cohomology"

Graduate Student Achievements

Scott Sakamoto

There are many steps graduate students in mathematics at the University of Arizona take before receiving their degrees. Successful completion of each exam or paper is worthy of notoriety. The following is a list of accomplishments attained by several students since the end of the spring semester of 1997.

Let's start with the Ph.D. recipients.

Mathematics:

  • Christopher Bowman: advisor Alan Newell, dissertation "Pattern Formation and Wavelets". After graduating in 1997, Christopher took a one-year position at Warwick University in the UK.
  • Stephen Shipman: advisor Nick Ercolani, dissertation "A Continuum Limit of a Finite Discrete Nonlinear Schroedinger System". Graduating in 1997 allowed Stephen to accept a three-year Research Assistant Professor position at Duke University.
  • Mark Torgerson: advisor Marek Rychlik, dissertation "Algebraic Non-integrability of the Cohen Map". Mark finished his degree in 1997 and accepted a job with the National Security Association in Maryland.
  • Olga Simek: advisor Lenny Friedlander, dissertation "Heat Trace Asynmptotics for Domains with Singular Boundaries". Olga is the first recipient of a departmental doctoral degree in 1998. At last report she is weighing positions at Rincon Research and Livermore Laboratories.
  • Greg Gillis: advisor David Gay, dissertation "Design Considerations in Composite Conductors: an Exposition of Percolation Theory". This second Ph.D. recipient of 1998 will begin as an Assistant Professor at Southern Utah University in the fall.

Applied Mathematics:

  • Karla Horsch: advisor David Levermore. In August of 1997, Karla completed the last step of the doctoral program with her dissertation, "Asymptotic Stability of Periodic Complex Ginzberg-Landau Equation." She is employed at Rincon Research in Tucson.
  • Richard Brazier: advisor Dr Wallace (Geo-Sci). "Seismic Wave Propagation Stitching; Matching Local and Global Techniques," culminated in Richard's Ph.D. in 1998.
  • Rahman Ghamasee: advisor Dr Goldberg (SIE). Rahman's work, "A Neural Network Approach for the Solution of Traveling Salesman and Basic Vehicle Routing Problems," earned him a Ph.D. degree in 1998.
  • Howard Gifford: advisor Harry Barrett (Radiology). "Theory and Application of Fourier Crosstalk: An Evaluator of Digital-system Design," was the title of Howard's dissertation in 1998.
  • In May of 1998, Craig Abbey (advisor Harry Barrett (Radiology)) is scheduled to present "Assessment of Reconstructed Images."

Now let's list the master's recipients.

Mathematics:

Ryan Ruddy, Duncan Matthew Russell, and Xianbao Xu received master's degrees in 1997. In 1998, Jason Belnap, Jia-Ling Dai, Mai Dang, Jing-yue Liu, Maria Agrotis, and Margie Lyscas finished their master's programs. Other students scheduled to graduate in Spring 1998 are Kevin Griffin, Scott Lietz, Kirk Mehtlan, and Mark Moelich.

Applied Mathematics:

This year's master's degree list includes Orna Amir, Francisco Bido, Daniel Coombs, Brooke McGuire, Quan Hung Tran, and Jung Min Woo. In May of 1998, Eric Backstrom, Andre Lehovich, Paulo Mario Parra, Jesse (Jay) Taylor, and David Brian Walton are scheduled to finish their master's degrees.

Oral preliminaries in mathematics were passed by Marcel Nzeukou, Michaela Avila De Brau, Jia-ling Dai, and Scott Sakamoto; Orna Amir, David Marsden, and Karl Bauer passed them in the Applied Mathematics program.

Qualifying exams are one of the first challenges graduate students prepare for. In mathematics, Jeff Edmonds, Jia-Ling Dai, and Maria Agrotis successfully completed qualifying exams. Daniel Coombs, Jesse (Jay) Taylor, David Brian Walton, and Andre Lehovich passed qualifying exams in the applied program.

As is apparent, many students made great strides towards their goals in the 1997-1998 school year. Many more years of success are anticipated.

Math Center/Undergraduate Programs

Chris Mikel, Math Center Coordinator

The Mathematics Department is expanding undergraduate research opportunities for mathematics majors -- see the Math Center web pages for further info. This year fourteen faculty members offered projects for undergraduate students to investigate and others indicated willingness to advise students who have projects on which they'd like to work.

Chris Bergevin, Todd Cadwallader, Hyung-jeong Han, Leon Lin, Robert Thompson, Adam Arluke, Vishal Devraj, Alex Messan, and Anna Ambrosio-Reid investigated "Control of Chaos in Laser Systems" under the guidance of Professors Moloney, Ercolani, Lega, Hsu, and Indik. Chris and Robert displayed posters describing their work at the Southwestern Regional Joint Meeting of the AMATYC and MAA and in the Mathematics Building Lobby during Math Awareness Week.

Imelda Kirby studied Mathematical Modeling of Oxygen Transport to the Brain with Professor Secomb of the Mathematics and Physiology Departments.

Moses Milazzo looked for Patterns in Continued Fractions with Professor Madden.

Cheryl Lacotta participated in the Research Tutorial for graduate students and completed a senior honors thesis on the subject of Stochastic Differential Equations under the supervision of Professor Bruce Bayly. She also exhibited at the Southwestern Regional Joint Meeting of the AMATYC and MAA and Math Awareness Week, as well as the Undergraduate Research Forum held at the U of A. Cheryl received her bachelor's degree in Mathematics in May 1998 and will continue her studies in the Applied Mathematics Ph.D. program at the University of Arizona.

Undergraduate students are strongly encouraged to participate in research opportunities and/or internships. These experiences greatly enhance a student's under-graduate education and the opportunities available for graduate school and/or jobs.

Tivon Jacobson was named the Outstanding Senior for the Department of Mathematics for May 1998. He was also selected as the Outstanding Senior for the College of Science. For his senior honors thesis, Tivon did hypothesis testing of flour beetle population dynamics using residuals generated by nonlinear systems, under the tutelage of Professor Jim Cushing. During his sophomore year, he conducted an inquiry into the twisting of fibers under tension for Dr. William Bickel in the Department of Physics. Tivon is graduating with a double major in mathematics and physics. During his junior and senior years Tivon worked at the Lunar and Planetary Labs West, doing calculations and programming for optical design and testing of a magnetosphere-imaging, satellite-based telescope. He gave an excellent undergraduate colloquium talk on his work during Math Awareness Week 1998, the theme for which was Mathematics and Imaging. Next year Tivon will enter the Ph.D. program in Applied Mathematics at New York University's Courant Institute.

The following undergraduate students earned awards and recognition for their academic efforts:

  • Outstanding Senior Award - December 1997 - Paul Mayfield.
    Paul is now a Ph.D. student and TA in Mathematics at Arizona State University.
  • Graesser Foundation Mathematics Scholarships - Evan Deaubl, Carolyn Lanser, Miriam Miklofsky, Patrick Shipman, Melissa Bjelland, Michael Gibbons, Alice Haloran, Steven Steinke, and Tom Wilkening.
  • Richard Pierce Memorial Scholarship - Todd Cadwallader.
  • Rick Peet Memorial Scholarship - Logan Trujillo.
  • Van de Verde Memorial Scholarship in Science - Michael Todd Thompson.
  • Phi Beta Kappa membership invitations were offered to mathematics majors Melissa Bjelland, Micah Boyd, Gary Gongwer, and Nicholas Switanek.
  • Tracy Regan and Demetria Shaddeg have been named in Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges in the 1998 edition.

Mathematics Colloquium

Dinesh Thakur

On-line Seminar and Colloquia Info

The following is a list of speakers , their affiliations and the titles of their talks. Local hosts are given in parenthesis.

  • D. N. Verma, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, (Evens) "Classical Representation Theory as a Higher Multilinear Algebra"
  • Florence Fasanelli, Mathematical Association of America, (Velez) "Outreach Activities in Departments of Mathematics"
  • Marek Rychlik, University of Arizona, "There Is No Wheel With Two Axles - The Solution of the Equichordal Point Problem"
  • Nolan Wallach, University of California - San Diego, (Evens) "A Variety of Solutions to the Yang-Baxter Equations"
  • Michael Larsen, University of Missouri, (Thakur)"t-adic Groups and Algebraic Groups"
  • Edward Nelson, Princeton University, (Faris) "Mathematical Logic and Computational Complexity"
  • David Goss, Ohio State University, (Thakur) "Separability, Operators and L-zeroes"
  • John Millson, University of Maryland, (Flaschka) "On Representations of Artin Groups, Projective Arrangements, and the Fundamental Groups of Smooth Complex Algebraic Varieties"
  • Jim Carrel, University of British Columbia, (Evens) "Singular Loci of Schubert Varieties"
  • Bjorn Poonen, University of California - Berkeley, (Thakur)"Lattice Polygons and the Number 12"
  • Jeremy Teitelbaum, University of Illinois, Chicago, (McCallum/Thakur)"Sparse Linear Algebra Over Finite Fields"
  • Thomas Kriecherbauer, Courant Institute, (McLaughlin)"Universality in Random Matrix Theory Via Integrable Methods"
  • Mark Freidlin, University of Maryland, (Maier) "Long-time Behavior of Perturbed Hamiltonian Systems and PDE's with a Small Parameter"
  • Andrew Granville, University of Georgia, (Madden/Thakur) "The abc-conjecture and Analytic Number Theory"
  • Alexandra Shlapentokh, East Carolina University, (Kim/Thakur)"Extensions of Hilbert's Tenth Problem"
  • William Goldman, University of Maryland, (Xia)"Moduli Spaces of Surface Group Representations"
  • Walter Craig, Brown University, (Ercolani)"Small Divisors in PDE and Other Places"
  • Michael Filaseta, University of South Carolina, (Brillhart/Thakur)"The Irreducibility of Some Classical Polynomials"
  • Igor Dolgachev, University of Michigan, (Kim) "Algebraic Invariants and Automorphic Functions"
  • Edward Frenkel, University of California - Berkeley, (Lu) "On a q-analogue of the KdV System"
  • Yuri Zarhin, Pennsylvania State University, (Kim/Thakur) "Semistable Reduction of Abelian Varieties."
  • Ernst U. Gekeler, Universitat des Saarlandes, (Thakur) "Cuspidal Groups of Modular Curves"
  • John Tate, University of Texas at Austin, (Thakur) "How To Compute the Group of Points on an Elliptic Curve"
  • Eugene Gutkin, University of Southern California, (Rychlik) "Geometric Aspects of Billiard Dynamics"
  • Roger Zierau, Oklahoma State University, (Evens) "Flag Domains and Representation Theory"

The Mathematics Education Ph.D.

Steve Willoughby

In 1991 the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona began offering a Ph.D. in mathematics with option in mathematics education. The purpose of the program is to prepare mathematics educators who have a sufficient background in mathematics to teach any undergraduate mathematics course, who have sufficient knowledge and interest in mathematics education so that they can discuss intelligently major issues in mathematics education, and who have taught pre-college mathematics so that they have first-hand experience with the kinds of difficulties classroom teachers face.

Students are required to pass the regular Department Qualifying Examinations (covering graduate level algebra, real analysis, and geometry/topology) and take at least 36 graduate credits in mathematics. They must also take at least 12 credits in a supporting minor (ordinarily education) and have two or more years of pre-college teaching experience (which may be completed through practicums). The dissertation is ordinarily a research study in mathematics education or an expository or historical paper in mathematics.

In 1997 the first two students in this program completed their work and received the Ph.D. A third completed his work in 1998, and a fourth should complete his dissertation in 1999.

Amy Rabb-Liu did an in-depth study of three excellent teachers of calculus, analyzing some of the differences between them and the differing understandings of their students. The remarkable differences that exist between teachers' and students' perceptions of what is happening in the classroom is only one of the fascinating findings of this study. Careful reading of this study would probably give us all a far deeper understanding of what students are learning as we do our best to teach them.

Ed Alexander completed a three-way study of the effects of reform calculus on students. One part of the study involved following students in subsequent courses for which calculus is a prerequisite. Although there was a slight difference favoring the reform calculus students, he concluded that the difference could probably be accounted for by the Hawthorn effect and the fact that early sections of reform calculus were taught by particularly good teachers. The computer program that Ed developed and perfected to follow students through subsequent courses could be a very valuable tool in other evaluation activities such as deciding which individual instructors do the best job of preparing their students for subsequent courses. The other parts of the study required students (three years after their calculus courses) to complete questionnaires and participate in individual interviews to determine their understanding of various concepts from calculus and the connections between them. As with the large statistical study, the results seemed to indicate that the particular text material being used could neither supply the "magic bullet" to solve all our difficulties in teaching mathematics nor were any of the materials studied so bad as to cause major negative results in students' learning. Variations among teachers, differences in students interests and abilities, and other factors seemed at least as influential as the particular text material being used.

Greg Gillis has just completed work on his dissertation which is an expository paper on percolation theory. His work explains this branch of applied mathematics in terms that should be accessible to a good undergraduate mathematics student and even to excellent high school students. Along with the written material, he includes physical materials with which the student can, for example, test conductivity for various concentrations of conductors and insulators (semi-conductors). He also includes software to help students complete various experiments designed to further their understanding of the mathematics of percolation theory.

Scott Sakamoto (who is himself legally blind) is studying methods of teaching mathematics to young children whose sight is impaired. His study concentrates primarily on the use of the Kranmer abacus.

We believe this program is substantially improving the quality of mathematics educators available to work on the complex and important problems of improving mathematics learning.

Mathematics Instruction Colloquium

Steve Willoughby

On-line Seminar and Colloquia Info

The Mathematics Instruction Colloquium (MIC) was created in 1987 to encourage greater interaction between the students and faculty of the Department of Mathematics, the Department of Teaching and Teacher Education, other departments of the University, and local schools. Local residents who are interested in mathematics education but not in one of the above categories are also encouraged to participate in the MIC.

The MIC holds weekly hour-long meetings to discuss issues in mathematics instruction from pre-kindergarten through graduate school. Students who wish to do so may take the MIC for one unit of graduate credit each semester.

This year speakers and their topics have included:

  • Steve Willoughby: Calculator Activities that Encourage Mathematical Thinking
  • David Gay: The History and Politics of Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: The Evolution of a Course
  • Jeff Krause: Using ClarisWorks Spreadsheets in Problem Solving
  • Richard B. Thompson: Complex Numbers, 2 X 2 Matrices, Quaternions, and Vector Analysis; the Work of William Rowan Hamilton, Arthur Cayley, and Josiah Willard Gibbs.
  • Pamela Keane: Projects in High School Calculus
  • Jose Fonseca: Build Your Dream House
  • William Mueller: Dusting off Mathematical Models: Mathematics Education Reform in 19th Century America
  • Greg Gillis: Design Problems in Manufacturing Composite Conductors
  • Carole Locklear: Literacy and Mathematics
  • Steve Wheaton: Modular Arithmetic and Patterns in Pascal's Triangle
  • Fernando Rendon: Domains of Functions
  • Kenneth Bucholtz: Problem Solving and Traditional Basics
  • Scott Collins: Mathematics Goes to the Carnival
  • Melanie Ayers: Understanding Students' Use of Graphing Calculators in High School Mathematics Class. Teachers vs. Students Perceptions. Differences in Uses by Males and Females.
  • Scott Sakamoto: Teaching the Abacus to Visually Impaired Students
  • Steve Willoughby: School Algebra: How to Teach it and Why Not To.
  • Ed Alexander: Tilings
  • Jose David Fonseca: Diagnostic Interview: Problem Solving Case Study
  • Greg Gillis: The Evolution of a Teacher Who Asked His Students to Explain Their Work: An Episode in Thinking About Thinking
  • Kate McGivney: An Introduction to Voronoi Diagrams and Delaunay Triangulations
  • Ken Bucholtz: Fun with IMPs (Integrated Mathematics Projects)
  • William J. Wagner: Using Applications & Technology to Revise Pre-Calculus Courses
  • Andy Winsberg: An Introduction to Graph Theory
  • Jeffrey Krause: Topics from Math 301
  • Fernando Rendon: Language, Customs, and Mathematics
  • Bryce Hanlon: Cryptography
  • Carole Locklear: Making Math Fun: Games & Motivational Activities {Fraction Bingo, The Factor Game, Math Baseball, 99, etc.)
  • Pamela Keane: The Integrated Mathematics Program
  • Scott Collins: Mathematics Goes to the Carnival

Math Movies

John Leonard

Math Movies (or, more precisely, Math Videos - it has been over a year since we last unreeled film) continued offering our students alternative views of mathematics. Chaos and fractals are current buzzwords, and we tried to clarify the ideas with two excellent Science Television videos by Robert Devaney of Boston University: "Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics" and "Transition to Chaos: TheOrbit Diagram and the Mandelbrot Set". A showing of George Polya's "Let Us Teach Guessing" was made by request, and many were amused by the contrast between the sartorial standards of the 1950s classroom and typical dress of today's students.

The moving Nova documentary "The Proof", relating Andrew Wiles' triumph over Fermat's Last Theorem, was especially interesting, since we later showed Nova's "A Mathematical Mystery Tour", which discussed many outstanding mathematical conjectures, including (at the time the program was aired) the aforementioned Last Theorem.

We rounded out the season with another Nova film, "Einstein Revealed", featuring dramatizations of passages from Einstein's letters and notebooks, and interviews with Einstein scholars.

(Pre-) Actuarial Studies at UA

Donald E. Myers

A number of newspaper articles have reported the profession of "Actuary" as one of the best (in terms of job satisfaction, salary, potential for advancement, intellectual challenge, etc). We do not have an Actuarial Studies Program at The U of A but we provide both opportunity and coursework that can get a candidate started. An undergraduate degree in mathematics is not a requirement but that kind of background is essential to making progress in passing actuarial examinations.

The entire examination system (both that of the Society of Actuaries and the Casualty Society of America) is being revised, but mathematics and statistics still form the base. Computer experience (especially with software such as spreadsheets, word-processors, database packages, statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS, S-Plus); courses in accounting, economics, and finance; as well as good communication skills (both oral and written) will stand the mathematics major in good stead when looking for a job. Completion of the basic calculus sequence, linear algebra, and the probability-statistics sequence provide the background for the first two examinations.

Regrettably many undergraduate majors find that there are not many job opportunities for graduates with only a BS or BA degree. Teaching in K-12 is one but actuarial science provides an attractive alternative. Some companies hire at the entry level with no examinations, but expecting one or two is more common. Nearly all employers will provide some form of assistance in passing subsequent examinations. Graduate study is not discouraged but initially will not replace progress in passing examinations nor experience in the field.

In spite of our not having a formal program a number of our students have gone into the field, including a few Ph.D.s. The number of employers that call asking for referrals has steadily increased for some examples see

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~donaldm/job_act.html.

For a listing of courses offered at The U of A and their relevance to various actuarial examinations see http://www.u.arizona.edu/~donaldm/actuarl.html

Several years ago faculty at the three Arizona universities, as well as some at neighboring institutions, organized. A meeting is held each spring, with an emphasis on providing information for students and contacts with employers (primarily in the Phoenix area). Except for the spring of 1994, when I was on sabbatical, I have taken a group of U of A students to this meeting each year.

Some U of A graduates known to be working in the field: Matt Naughton, Steve Speer, Jason Bein, Betty Berni, Douglas Hoylman, Angela Taeger, Matt Modisett, Marilyn Oliver, Christine Castonquay, and Joshua Pitcl (if we missed you, let us know).

Putnam Competition

John Leonard

In the 58th annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, held last December, The U of A can be proud to have two students placed in the prestigious "Top Participants" list (essentially the top 25%). They were Steven Steinke and Nina Kolokolova. A third U of A student, Sofiya Vasina, missed that honor by a single point. Our thanks to the eleven undergraduates who devoted a Saturday to representing the Department. They are Sofiya Vasina, Michael Todd Thompson, Steven Steinke, Patrick Shipman, David Morales, Moses Milazzo, Robert Macomber, Carolyn Lanser, Cheryl Lacotta, Antonina Kolokolova, and Brian David.

Should you care to whet your wittes, we append one of the problems with which the competitors contended.

Problem A2. Players 1, 2, 3, ..., n are seated around a table and each has a single penny. Player 1 passes a penny to player 2, who then passes two pennies to player 3. Player 3 then passes one penny to player 4, who passes two pennies to player 5, and so on, players alternately passing one penny or two to the next player who still has some pennies. A player who runs out of pennies drops out of the game and leaves the table. Find an infinite set of numbers n for which some player ends up with all n pennies.

Puzzler

Suppose we have a clock (an analog clock!) that is normal in all respects except that the minute hand and the hour hand are indistinguishable. In most cases it is nevertheless possible to tell the time without ambiguity - example if one hand is on 12 and the other on 1 it must be 1 o'clock. How many times are there in a 12 hour day when the time of day, as shown by this clock, is ambiguous?

By way of a hint - the number of ambiguous times is finite. The "first" occurrence: one can't distinguish between slightly more than 5 minutes past 12 and slightly less than 1/2 minute past 1. Devilishly clever solutions sent to the editor are eligible for the grand prize of being published in the next edition.

SWIG

Anu Rao

Throughout 1997-1998, the Graduate Student Software Interest Group seminars were well attended. During the spring semester the general focus of our discussions was PC hardware, with talks on CPUs, motherboards, memory, video cards, monitors, and backup media.

As always, many thanks to our volunteer and coerced speakers!

  • Andre Lehovich, Introduction to Matlab
  • Angel Pineda, An Introduction to Maple
  • Anu Rao, How to Set Up Your Own Home Page: The Basics
  • Anu Rao, An Introduction to Compilers and Debuggers
  • Mark Hays and Anu Rao, Does Animation Have You In Knots?
  • Anu Rao, Incorporating Latex2e Documents
  • Mark Hays, Customize Your X-Window Desktop with FVWM
  • Robert Condon, Home Computing Systems: PC Hardware
  • Robert Condon and Mark Hays, Home Computing Systems, Part II: How to Blow Up Your New Computer...and Watch in Style
  • Mark Hays, Home Computing Systems, Part III: Buying and Frying a Monitor
  • Mark Hays, Home Computing Systems, Part IV: Back-up Media
  • Joe Erker, Drawing and Painting Pictures on Workstations
  • Andre Lehovich, Introduction to RCS and Source Control

Staff Stuff

Carole Anderson and Jerrie Bieberstein

Forging?

Forging? What is Forging? Last year we were valiantly FORGING ahead into the new Millennium. Good Grief!! We still have another year and a half to go. So this year let's say we are sliding reluctantly into that vast unknown labeled "The New Millennium". That out of the way, let's catch up on our staffing changes. Robert Lanza (Algebra Office) yet again accepted another position, but this time outside of the Mathematics Department and into the now infamous CatCard Department. We also said goodbye to Susan Dzik (ACMS), Betty Fink (Business Office), Bridget Mendibles (Graduate Office), and Jennifer Roll (Copy/Mail Room).

We would like to welcome Sophie Gibson in the Business Office, Sam Gaxiola in ACMS, Charlotte Hamilton in the Graduate Office, Leona Punte in ACMS, and Narquita Wright in the Copy/Mail Room. WELCOME everyone!!

Things of note: Our Second Annual Ice Breaker Party at Bill McCallum's place was a resounding success. We are now contemplating other festivities to mark the passage or onset of party-worthy events, such as Summer, Beginning of Fall Semester, Here Comes Halloween, etc., provided that Bill and Amy agree.

Sandy Sutton was this year's winner of our College of Science Staff Recognition Award of Excellence. The selection is made after reviewing nominations submitted by faculty and staff for staff employees. The criteria used to evaluate nominees includes their volunteer work on special projects, service on departmental or University committees, filling in when their unit is short staffed, exceptional cooperation and courteousness, their suggestions that save their units time and money, etc. So congratulations Sandy! Congratulations also to nominees Carole Anderson, Jerrie Bieberstein, Mark Hays, and Janet Lange. All College of Science staff were recognized at a luncheon on May 5, 1998 in the Arizona Ballroom.

Still showing up and shining everyday is our stellar staff: Carole Anderson, Jerrie Bieberstein, Deborah Gaines, Rosario Garcia, Sam Gaxiola, Sophie Gibson, Lois Gorski, Charlotte Hamilton, Mark Hays, Janet Lange, Laurie Lefebvre, Kathleen Leick, Zora Mlejnkova, Vicki Postula, Leona Punte, Sandy Sutton, Bernadette Thomas, Jose Torres, Faye Villalobos, Narquita Wright, Brooke Zang, and Julie Zehring. We have to be the luckiest department on campus.

Till next time...

Teacher Enhancement Workshop Lab (TEWL)

A Twist On Professional Development

David Gay

Instead of playing soccer or softball, fifty-four elementary and middle school kids spent many mornings last summer doing mathematics and having a ball with it (pun intended!). This was Carnaval Matematico, held for two weeks in June 1997 at El Pueblo Neighborhood Center in Tucson. At various booths placed around a large room, young individuals tackled patterns and functions, probability and statistics, graphing and 3-D geometry. They solved problems, wrestled with puzzles, and played number games. One participant said, "You do mathematics by doing anything - like playing games, figuring out measurements, and doing problems. I think that is cool!" Another added, "I learned math is funner than I thought."

The students were led in these activities by nine Tucson elementary and middle school mathematics teachers, former participants from Making Everybody Count and PRIME, two NSF funded Teacher Enhancement Programs at the University of Arizona. For these teachers, Carnaval Matematico was also a laboratory setting in which they tried out mathematical activities that they might later implement in their own school-year classrooms. In several sessions prior to Carnaval itself, the teachers not only learned about new ideas for the mathematics classroom but also planned how to carry them out in the Carnaval setting. These learning and planning sessions were led by Marta Civil (U of A Mathematics Department), Linda Griffin (PRIME resource teacher) and Lisa Garcia (PRIME resource teacher). From an elementary school teacher: "Other professional development experiences have focused only on how to teach a student. They give great ideas, but we don't see it in action. Here, we have the opportunity to put our ideas in action and if it doesn't work for us we can alter it. It is great!" From a middle school teacher: "The planning sessions, collaboration, and the providing and gathering of materials for us was useful and greatly appreciated. The actual use of new ideas is what made it immediately helpful. What a pleasure to be a part of this program!"

This Teacher Enhancement Workshop Lab (TEWL), incorporating learning and planning sessions for the teachers with Carnaval Matematico for the students, was an extension of Making Everybody Count. Marta Civil was TEWL's director and Rosie Andrade (U of A Mathematics) its evaluator. Making Everybody Count was a joint project of the Mathematics Department and Women's Studies, co-directed by David Gay (Mathematics) and Deborah Yoklic (Women's Studies).

TEWL activities for the teacher-participants continued through the fall of 1997. Five Saturday workshops dealt with ideas and techniques for the elementary and middle school mathematics classroom: calculator based laboratories, spreadsheets, Geometer's Sketchpad, and others.

The Teaching Post-Doc Class of 1997-98

Elias Toubassi

We are pleased to introduce the first teaching post-doc class in the department - Bryce Hanlon and Kate McGivney.

Bryce comes to us from Tulane University where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1997. His dissertation was in semigroup cohomology under the direction of Pierre Grillet. Bryce was born in Connecticut but did most of his growing up in South Carolina. He did his undergraduate work at the College of Charleston. During the past year Bryce has been involved in several departmental activities including SWRIMS and the Mathematics Instruction/Entry Level Colloquium. He is also working on developing a website for the use of calculus students. This summer Bryce plans to write class notes on signature verification to be used in courses at the high school and university level. Bryce is interested in exploring alternative teaching styles that engage students in mathematics. His hobbies include hiking, biking, computer games, puzzles, and Legos. During his tenure in our department Bill McCallum will serve as his faculty mentor.

Kate comes to us from Lehigh University where she received her Ph.D. degree in 1997. Her dissertation was in combinatorial optimization under the direction of Joe Yukich. Kate grew up in Connecticut and received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Hartford and her Master's degree from Northeastern University. Besides SWRIMS and the Mathematics Instruction/Entry Level Colloquium Kate has been involved with two committees to design new courses. The first is a two credit pre-calculus course specifically aimed at students who are not doing well in first semester calculus. The second is a computer laboratory course in statistics. This summer Kate will take part in a six week Native American Institute in Mathematics and Literacy program for high school students from the Tohono O'Odham Nation and the Pasqua Yaqui Nation. She has primary responsibility for a week on mathematics and economics. Her teaching interests range from precalculus to upper division probability and statistics. Her hobbies include hiking and cycling. Her faculty mentor during the next three years is Joe Watkins.

Undergraduate Mathematics For Elementary Teachers

A Three University Collaboration

David Gay

During the summer and fall of 1997 faculty members from the mathematics departments at the three Arizona state universities worked to improve the mathematics courses for prospective elementary school teachers. The collaborative project, Undergraduate Mathematics for Elementary Teachers (UMET), was supported by the Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Higher Education Fund administered by the Arizona Board of Regents. UMET's Principal Investigators - Marilyn Carlson (ASU), Jean McGehee (NAU), and David Gay (U of A) - co-sponsored a mini-conference for mathematics educators from around the state and led teams of instructors in the development of activities for use in mathematics courses for future elementary school teachers.

The mini-conference was held June 12 and 13 on the ASU campus and dealt with issues pertinent to the universities' mathematics courses for future elementary teachers: choice of curriculum materials, assessment, course delivery, and professional development for individuals teaching the courses. Thirty mathematics educators attended the conference including instructors of the courses in community colleges and the universities, elementary school teachers, elementary mathematics specialists from colleges of education, and others with a strong stake in improving the quality of the courses.

At each of the three universities writing teams were also formed, consisting of instructors of the mathematics courses for future elementary school teachers. Each team assembled sets of activities that could be used in the courses. The activities were carefully scripted so as to be useful for novice course instructors. (At The U of A, written copies of the activities have been incorporated into the Math 301 Instructor's Handbook.) During the summer the three teams met three times (once at each school) to compare notes on the courses at the three institutions and to share progress in creating activities.

As an outgrowth of this collaboration, a workshop on the content and methods courses for future high school mathematics teachers will take place at ASU during the first week of June 1998. Participants in the workshop will be twenty mathematicians and mathematics educators from the state's institutions of higher education and fifteen high school mathematics teachers from around the state.