Mathematics & Computer Science
Upcoming Events
The Garden State Undergraduate Mathematics Conference will take place on April 10th, at Middlesex County College, in conjunction with the MAA New Jersey Sectional Meeting. Penelope Dunham and Michael Huber will be attending and presenting and students are invited to join them.
2009-2010 News (most recent first)
On Saturday, February 27th, Muhlenberg College hosted the 32nd annual High School Mathematics Contest. Nine teams from schools from the region were on campus to participate in problem-solving and mathematical games. Several Muhlenberg students volunteered as escorts, readers, score keepers and magicians during the fun event. William Dunham gave the opening remarks (What's Special About 32?) and all members of the faculty assisted throughout the morning. Linda McGuire closed the contest by announcing winners and distributing prizes (with Byungchul Cha). See you next year! .(pictures)
- Last summer, a few of our students were involved in summer research (either with Muhlenberg professors, REUs, or independent studies) and the Math Club held a meeting on Thursday, February 4th, so these students could present their research with us. There were presentations by Matt Cecconi, Kendra Joseph, and Mark Shive, as well as information for how you can attend an REU.
On Feb 5th, Clif Kussmaul co-organized "Global Perspectives on Constructivist Learning: A Seminar for College Teachers" at the University of Kerala, and presented sessions on "Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning" and "Team Project Based Learning"".
On Feb 9th and 10th, Clif Kussmaul gave presentations on "Systems Biology" and "FOSS for Bioinformatics" as part of Refresher Course in Bioinformatics organized by the Academic Staff College, University of Kerala.
Michael Huber delivered two presentations at the 2010 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco, CA. On January 14th, he was an invited panelist for the Special Interests Group of the Mathematical Association of America (SIGMAA) on Statistics Education panel entitled, "What a first (or second) time teacher of statistics should know." On January 15th, he delivered a paper entitled, "Modeling Radon in Pennsylvania" as part of the MAA Session on Quantitative Reasoning and the Environment.
On Jan 12th, Clif Kussmaul gave an invited lecture on "Free and Open Source Software for Bioinformatics" as part of Bioinformatica Indica 2010: International Symposium on Computational Biology, Structural Bioinformatics, & Systems Biology at the Centre for Bioinformatics, University of Kerala, India.
On Jan 8th, Clif Kussmaul gave an invited lecture on Software Estimation at the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management - Kerala.
"Building a Model for Scoring 20 or More Runs in a Baseball Game," a paper by Michael Huber and Rodney X. Sturdivant, has been accepted in Annals of Applied Statistics.
On Dec 11th, Clif Kussmaul gave an invited lecture at the International Conference on Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications (CISIM) and attended the World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC), both at PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India.
On Dec 5th, Byungchul Cha gave a talk at The 11th Palmetto Number Theory Series, held at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. The title was Growth rate of the summatory function of Moebius function in function fields.
On Dec 2nd, Clif Kussmaul gave a public lecture on Helping Students Learn to Read, Write, Communicate, and Collaborate using a Wiki at the Institution of Engineers (India), Trivandrum, India.
"Using Mythematics in the Classroom: The Fifth Labor of Hercules," a paper by Michael Huber, was published in PRiMUS: Problems, Resources, and issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies, Vol 19, No 6, November-December 2009.
On Nov 23-27st, Clif Kussmaul attended the Fulbright Conference in Puducherry, India.
On Nov 21st, Clif Kussmaul gave an invited lecture on Free and Open Source Software for the Computer Science Department at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT).
On Nov 11th, Michael Huber participated in a Sabermetrics discussion at Seton Hall University. With his two co-authors, Gabriel B. Costa and John T. Saccoman, Dr. Huber discussed their recent book, Practicing Sabermetrics: Putting the Science of Baseball Statistics to Work.
On Nov 9th, Byungchul Cha gave a talk at Algebra Seminar at Wesleyan University. The title was Chebyshev's bias, prime number races and zeros of L-functions.
On Oct 30th, Clif Kussmaul visited SaintGits College of Engineering in Kottayam, Kerala, India, and gave two lectures to faculty and students in computer science, and one lecture in a development program for engineering faculty.
On Oct 28th, William Dunham and Michael Huber participated in "Science and Math Night" at the Labyrinth Book Store in Princeton, NJ, co-sponsored by Labyrinth Books and Princeton University Press. Dr. Dunham discussed his book, The Calculus Gallery, and Dr. Huber discussed his book, Mythematics.
On Oct 27th, Clif Kussmaul gave a guest lecture at Mary Matha College of Engineering and Technology in Trivandrum, Kerela, India on using wikis for teaching and learning.
On Oct 21st, Byungchul Cha gave a talk at the Number Theory Seminar at the University of Illinois-Chicago, which was titled Linear independence of zeta zeros in function fields.
On Oct 7th, Clif Kussmaul was an invited speaker at the Conference on Open Source Tools in Education: Benefits and Challenges, at the SCMS School of Technology and Management, Cochin, Kerala, India.
On Sep 22nd, Clif Kussmaul gave a guest lecture on Free and Open Source Software for 4th year computer science students, and on Sept 24 he gave the inaugural address for a workshop on SCILAB, both at the College of Engineering, Trivandrum.
- On Sep 15, the new Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics student lounge was officially opened when math club president Sarah Hoenigmann cut the ceremonial ribbon. College dignitaries attended and cake and ice cream was enjoyed by all!
Click here for more pictures.(pictures)
Clif Kussmaul gave the introductory lecture and a series of workshops for a refresher course for computer science instructors at the Academic Staff College, University of Kerala, Trivandrum, India.
Michael Huber authored "The calculus of Gothic architecture," which was published in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts (September 2009). Egner Memorial Chapel is featured in one of the examples of calculating areas of Gothic windows, arches, and domes.
Clif Kussmaul has a chapter titled "Wikis for collaboration and knowledge manegment" in the book Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design: Emerging Trends in User Experiences published by IGI Global, 2009.
Linda McGuire has assumed the position of chair of the Mathematics & Computer Science Department.
Clif Kussmaul is on sabbatical for the 2009-2010 year, and is a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar at the University of Kerala, in Thiruvananthapuram, India. See his blog at http://www.kussmaul.org/asia.
Check out what some of our 2009 Graduates are doing after graduation.
And some of our current students:
Mark Shive, '10, will be working as an actuarial intern for Towers Perrin in Parsippany, NJ this summer. Towers Perrin is a global professional services firm and Mark will be working the retirement line of the business.
Kendra Joseph, '10, will be participating in an REU at Brookhaven National Laboratory in atmospheric chemistry with Dr. Yin-nan Lee. This research is part of the Global Change Education Program (a program offered by the Department of Energy).
Keith Leitmeyer, '11, will be participating in an REU at Penn State University from July 1 to August 14. This program combines learning with research including mini-courses in knot theory and degree theory.
Rose Hamershock, '11, will be participating in an REU at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech University this summer. Projects involve modeling microscopic biological systems.
