Mathematics & Computer Science
2009-2010 News (most recent first)
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.
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.
2008-2009 News
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.
Clif Kussmaul attended the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference in Austin, TX, June 14-17. He presented two papers:
Software projects using free and open source software: Opportunities, challenges, & lessons learned.
InovaED: A model and resource to help students leverage late-stage intellectual property.
Clif Kussmaul participated in the SoftHum Workshop on Involving Students in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Projects at Drexel University, June 11-12, 2009.
Michael Huber attended the Computing and Mathematics Across the Sciences Workshop, which was sponsored by a Mellon Faculty Career Enhancement grant, held at Denison Univeristy from June 3-5, 2009. He presented Modeling with Ordinary Differential Equations with Darryl Yong from Harvey Mudd College, and he was a panelist on Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Examples and Opportunities.
Clif Kussmaul attended the Portal Conference in Gettysburg, PA, June 2-5, where he gave a presentation on Lightweight Portals using Free and Open Source Software.
On May 11-15, Michael Huber, Clif Kussmaul, and Linda McGuire participated in a Bioinformatics Workshop with other faculty and students as part of an NSF CCLI grant received by Bruce Wightman, in Biology.
Thursday, April 30th was the annual Mathematics/Computer Science/Physics picnic. (pictures)
William Dunham gave a talk to the History of Mathematics Seminar at All Souls College, Oxford, on April 27, 2009.
Congratulations to Michael Huber on being awarded The Robert C. Williams Award for Junior Faculty at Honors Convocation on April 26th.
Byungchul Cha gave a presentation on Linear independence of zeta zeros at the American Mathematical Society sectional meeting on April 25 in Worcester, MA.
On April 20th, Muhlenberg College held the 7th Annual Inductions into the Pennsylvania Chi Chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, a national honorary mathematics society. Eleven students(Josh Adams, Alyssa Roller, Leah Wittenberg, Katelyn Finley, Sarah Hoenigmann, Alice Hurst, Kendra Joseph, Nicole Montambault, Vincent Reformato, Mark Shive, and Samantha Unger) and one faculty member(Dr. David Crombecque) were inducted. (pictures)
Clif Kussmaul attended the NCIIA Annual Meeting in Alexandria, VA, Mar 19-21. He facilitated a open space workshop on entrepreneurship education, participated in one panel on using industry intellectual property, and another panel on bootstrapping entrepreneurship education programs, and chaired a paper session on multidisciplinary approaches.
Clif Kussmaul attended the annual conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education in Chattanooga, TN March 4-7. He gave a presentation on Free and Open Source Software Across the Curriculum, and organized a Birds-of-a-Feather session on Communication in Software Engineering Education.
On February 21, 2009, the Mathematics & Computer Science Department held its 31st Annual High School Mathematics Contest. Faculty and students welcomed participants from nine local high schools. Liberty High School took 1st place honors and Parkland HS was second.(pictures)
The 31st Muhlenberg High School Mathematics Contest is scheduled for Saturday, February 21, 2009. Three-person teams from nine local high schools will compete in short and long answer problems. See Math Contest 2007 for pictures from the last contest.
William Dunham published a paper When Euler Met l'Hopital in the February, 2009, issue of the MAA journal Mathematics Magazine, pp. 16 -- 25.
William Dunham and Penelope Dunham are on sabbatical at Cambridge University during Spring 2009.
Sarah Vodzak delivered a presentation entitled Using Absorbing Markov Chains to Model Caterpillar Populations Under Different Environmental Conditions at the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics. Her summer research was sponsored by George Benjamin and Rich Niesenbaum.
Sharon Albert, Religion Studies, and Clif Kussmaul had their chapter Why Wikis are Wonderful for Writing published in Writing and the iGeneration: Composition in the Computer-Mediated Classroom edited by Terry Carter and Maria Clayton and published by Fountainhead Press.
Chelsea Lobell, a CS major and presidential assistant for the Academic Resource Center, gave a poster on Free/Open Source Software Tools for a Library Website: A Comparative Analysis at the Educause Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in Philadelphia on January 8, based on work she did during Summer 2008 with Mary Moulton, Head of Library Systems and Information Transfer, and Clif Kussmaul, Associate Professor of Computer Science.
Clif Kussmaul co-authored a chapter on Wikis for knowledge management: Business cases, best practices, promises, & pitfalls in Web 2.0: The Business Model, M. D. Lytras, E. Damiani, and P. Ordóñez Pablos (eds) Springer, 2009.
Clif Kussmaul attended the Annual Conference on Object Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) in Nashville, TN Oct 19-23. He participated in a workshop on worked examples, gave a presentation on multistage assignments, and presented a poster on novel programming language features, based on work with Kellen Mickley '09.
William Dunham taught at Harvard University during Fall 2008. While there he delivered the 2008 Clay Public Lecture on the work of Leonhard Euler. The talk can be viewed on-line at www.claymath.org/video.
The Department of Mathematics & Computer Science welcomes David Crombecque. Dr. Crombecque will be teaching Calculus I & II.