Welcome to the home page of
the Department of Mathematics at East Tennessee State University. I am now
beginning my fourth year as Department Chair, and could not have been prouder
of all that our faculty and students do, on a daily basis, and with little fanfare,
great efficiency, and exhibiting the kind of multi-tasking that would make an
air traffic controller jealous. Our
department is quite a different place today than it was a few years ago,
primarily due to the various projects we have been able to launch with or
without external support. Here is a partial list of some of the happenings over
the last two or three years:
Active Adjuncts: Congratulations to Tom
Prior on his new position at a local school. Congratulations to Joanne Pumariega on receiving the Above
and Beyond teaching award awarded by OASIS. Congratulations to Corlis Robe, who, together with Edith
Seier, received the C. Oswald George “Best Paper” award
given by the Royal Statistical Society for their Teaching Statistics paper “Ducks and
Green: An Introduction to the Ideas of
Testing Hypotheses.”
Alumni return to the classroom:
Alumni Joy Markman, City Commerce Solutions, Gray TN; Renee
Ferguson, Social Security Administration, Baltimore, MD; and Joby
Kaufman, Northeast State Technical Community College, participated in the
ETSU Annual Homecoming Alumni Return to the Classroom event in 2002,
2003, and 2003 respectively. Renee will
be forming a Math Alumni Association.
Anant’s REU Program (see http://www.etsu.edu/math/godbole/nsf.htm)
is now in its 14th summer.
For each of the past two years, an ETSU student has been one of the
eight participants: Gabe Zimmer participated
in 2001 and Joe Johnson in 2002.
ARCOTS: The
inaugural Appalachian Regional Conference on the Teaching of Statistics (see http://www.etsu.edu/math/seier/ARCOTS.htm)
was held at ETSU in March 2003. Edith
Seier’s wonderful organization drew over 70 participants to our region for
this day-long conference, including keynote speakers Jessica Utts (UC
Davis), Richard Deveaux (Williams College) and Christine
Anderson-Cook (Virginia Tech).
Awards Banquet: This
annual event, held in April, honors our outstanding students and recognizes
faculty and graduate students for their contributions. See http://deserve.etsu.edu/kerleym/MathBanquet2001/banquet.htm
for details. Thanks to Lyndell
Kerley for organizing this event with such great efficiency. 2002 faculty award winners were Edith
Seier (research); George Poole (teaching) and Debbie Knisley
(service). In 2003, the committee
selected Teresa Haynes (research); Janice Huang (teaching) and Jeff
Knisley (service). Graduate student
awards for excellence in teaching and research went to Susan Hosler
(2002) and David Atkins (2003).
Banquet speakers were Gary Henson (2001); Sam Kaplan,
UNCA, 2002, and Gretchen Mathews, Clemson University, 2003.
Beating the National
Average: Our seniors beat the national average on the
Mathematics Major Field Test they took in May 2002, as part of the ETSU
Performance Funding Requirement. Way to
go, Class of ’02!!
We are all Biologists now: Thanks to a major $100,000 grant received by
grantmaestro Jeff Knisley, we find ourselves in the enviable position of
having to train undergraduates in various aspects of Quantitative Biology. The Institute for Quantitative Biology will
soon be launched with Steve Karsai as Director. It will be a collaboration between over one
dozen faculty members in Math, Biology and other departments. We are represented by the two Knisleys,
Abdul Jarrah, Bob Gardner, Edith Seier, Bob Price, and Anant Godbole, with
our biological co-conspirators being Steve Karsai, Hugh Miller, Lev
Yampolsky, Dan Johnson, Darrell Moore, Karl Joplin and Niall Shanks. 12 ETSU students will each receive $4650
in stipends and support for their work with these faculty members over the next
two summers. See the Project Webpage at
http://www.etsu.edu/iqb/
Books: Jeff Knisley’s Calculus text is well on its way towards
publication. His co-author is former
Milligan College faculty member Kevin Shirley. Don Hong and Bob Gardner’s book Real Analysis
with an Introduction to Wavelets will soon be published by Academic Press.
The Cameroon
Connection: Janice and Tom Huang spent a very productive 2001-02 sabbatical year at the
University of Buea in Cameroon, establishing a pipeline that has allowed us to
attract three excellent graduate students to our department. We expect many more students to make the
trip from Cameroon to Johnson City in the years to come!
College Awards: The
2002 College Research Award was given to Don Hong and the 2003 College
Service Award to Lyndell Kerley.
Congratulations!!!
The Council on
Undergraduate Research awarded Gabe Zimmer a $3000 undergraduate research
fellowship during the summer of 2002.
Developmental Mathematics:
We
are happy to welcome six new faculty members to our department, as the
Department of Mathematics merged in fall 2003 with the Developmental
Mathematics Program. We look forward to
fully coalescing the two programs over the next year. Welcome, DC Smith, Murray
Butler, Robert Davidson, Sherry Hardin, Jamie McGill, and Daryl Stephens!!
Doctoral Program: We
have temporarily put on hold the launching of a Ph.D. program that features an
early introduction to research, a focus on discrete and continuous modeling,
and collaborative research with the ETSU Colleges of Medicine, Nursing and
Public Health. The Institute for
Quantitative Biology will undoubtedly have a distinguished role to play in the
putative program – which has already received “permission to plan” from the
ETSU Academic Council.
Ebey Lectures: Anant Godbole gave the Annual Sherwood Ebey Lectures at the
University of the South, Sewanee, in April 2002.
External Review: We
will be producing a self-study document this fall as we quietly and confidently
make preparations for our periodic external departmental review to occur in the
spring of 2004.
Faculty-Student
Collaborative Research Awards, given
by the Honors Programs, were awarded to Gabe Zimmer (2001) and Joe Johnson
(2002).
Graduate School: Undergraduates
Ree’L Street and Joe Johnson have begun graduate programs at Georgia
Tech and Clemson respectively. Several
others have stayed on at ETSU for their MS work.
Grantwriting
Workshop: The CUR Grantwriting Workshop will be held at ETSU in
July 2004. Anant Godbole will be
Chair of the local organizing committee.
Michael Henning of the
University of Natal spent the Spring 2003 semester in our department. The quiet unassuming Mike was quite a hit
with our graduate students, while working with Teresa to write even more
papers….
Congratulations to Jay
Boland on his new permanent position of Director of the ETSU Honors
Programs.
The Kellogg Foundation awarded
our department, through a subcontract with the ETSU Kellogg Partnerships, a $40,000
award to Change the Infrastructure of K-8 Mathematics in Unicoi County. Two courses were taught by Edith
Seier and Anant Godbole to teachers in Unicoi County. We have launched student tutoring and Family
Math programs in Erwin. Debbie
Knisley is the third coPI on the grant.
Knisley in NJ: Debbie Knisley attended two cutting-edge workshops in the area of
Mathematical Biology during the Summer of 2002 – at the prestigious Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the DIMACS Center at Rutgers.
We are all Math Educators now: Our involvement with mathematics outreach
has been long-standing, with Janice Huang being at the forefront of all
efforts in this arena -- such as the Eisenhower-funded workshops; and serving
as President of UETCTM and TMTA. The
renewal of our commitment towards teacher training started in June 2001, when Janice
Huang, Rhona Cummings (CUAI), Debbie Knisley and Anant received a small but
prestigious grant from NSF/AASCU to make improvements in one of our pre-service
K-8 courses, namely MATH 1410. Only
about 14 of 100 proposals were funded nationwide. That summer, George Poole joined the group as he,
Debbie, Rhona, Vice-Provost Mike Woodruff and Anant attended a K-8
mathematics workshop in San Diego to plan strategies for the future. Rick Norwood and George Poole attended
the follow up workshop in San Diego during the summer of 2002. George Poole, Rick Norwood, and Michael
Marks attended a workshop in Washington DC soon after, even doing some
research during the drive there, and came away with one of three original
Exxon-Mobil grants to host a K-8 math brainstorming retreat in Johnson City
with Western Carolina University – one of our sister San Diego/AASCU schools.
The retreat was held in the spring of 2002. In 2002-03 we launched the Unicoi County project described above,
and the summer of 2003 saw Janice Huang and Jeff Knisley receive a
$55,000 ITQ (Eisenhower Title II) Grant to run very successful teachers’
workshops on Statistics and Mathematical Modeling. George Poole continues his active involvement with the
ACCLAIM group; he has received several NSF/ACCLAIM sub-awards to work with
teachers and students in Elizabethton City Schools. ONGOING: We are
currently negotiating with SW Virginia Schools to offer an evening Masters’
Program in Mathematics Education. Jeff,
George, Janice and Rick have submitted another $150,000 ITQ proposal to
“immerse” area teachers in Math over the next summer. And we keep waiting for
word on the outcome our $12.5M NSF-MSP partnership proposal with 17 school
districts and the Hands On Museum (see below).
Name Change: We
hope soon to change our name to the Department of Mathematical and
Statistical Sciences, to more accurately reflect our diverse
mathematical/statistical/educational identity, as revealed, for example,
through this webpage.
New Faculty: Abdul Jarrah joined us in 2002 from New Mexico State
University. A computational algebraist,
Abdul has already established solid research connections with his colleagues at
Virginia Tech. Susan Hosler joined
us, also in 2002, as a lecturer in charge of Quality Improvement, particularly
in the area of student learning in MATH 1530.
We hope to hire two new faculty members during the 2003-04 year. Watch this column for more details!!
Pending Grants: We
eagerly await the verdict on some exciting grant submissions, including a $12.5
M proposal The Northeast Tennessee K-8 Mathematics Partnership (J.
Knisley, J. Huang, G. Poole and A. Godbole are our key players, with every
other faculty member in the department having a role to play in the plan we
have proposed to NSF). If funded,
we will, together with our 18 partners, truly make a significant change in the
teaching of elementary mathematics in our region. Similarly, the ETSU-UNCA collaboration The Southern
Appalachian Undergraduate Research Initiative will, if funded, launch an
exciting project under the direction of Jay Boland, Sam Kaplan (UNCA) and
Anant. Watch this space for further
developments.
Promotions: Congratulations
to Edith Seier, Jeff Knisley and Bob Price on attaining the rank of
Associate Professor with tenure.
Congratulations to Jay Boland, Bob Gardner and Don Hong on
becoming Full Professors. Thanks to Teresa
Haynes, Linda Lawson and George Poole for creating new departmental
promotion and tenure criteria.
Rejected Proposals: Unfortunately,
we were not successful in some of our grant submissions. We hope to submit improved proposals for the
NSF-GK12 and NSF-Public Science Education Interns competitions in the future.
The Research continues
unabated: Despite the myriad things our
faculty members have been involved in, we have the strongest research record
among all departments in the college!!!
REU News: Senior
Jennifer Salyer participated in the James Madison University REU
program during the summer of 2003.
SIAM/SEAS: The
Southeast and Atlantic Section of SIAM will hold its regional conference at
ETSU in April 2004. Hats off to Debra
Knisley, George Poole and Abdul Jarrah for their hard work in making this
event happen.
Sonya Kovalevsky Math
Days: Edith Seier, Debbie Knisley and
Janice Huang received an AWM Grant to
host a Sonya Kovalevsky Math Days to spark and maintain an interest in
mathematics among area middle and high school girls. This event was held in summer 2001.
Southeast Regional AMS
Meeting: Thanks to the great proposal written by Bob Gardner
and Don Hong, ETSU will host the Regional Southeastern AMS Meeting in
October 2005!! This is quite an honor
for us!
The
Statcave, our laboratory to radically
change the teaching of MATH 1530 (Probability and Statistics) was launched in
2002, thanks to an NSF Grant in the amount of $125,000 (matched by ETSU Funds,
primarily TAF monies) awarded to Jeff Knisley, Edith Seier, and Bob
Price. This is a true feather in
our hats. Course coordinator Tod
Jablonski has taken on the task of aiding in the transition associated with
our adopting a new textbook for this class.
Edith Seier and Bob Price have been instrumental in bringing our faculty and graduate
students up to speed with the radically new pedagogies we now feature in this
most beloved of ETSU classes.
The
Strong Perfect Graph Conjecture was proved at ETSU during the NSF-CBMS
conference on Structure and Decomposition of Graphs organized by Debbie
Knisley and Anant. Georgia Tech’s
Robin Thomas gave 10 keynote talks, and the line-up of speakers that were
attracted to the conference in May 2002 was truly remarkable. See http://www.etsu.edu/math/cbms/
for more details
Teresa Turns 100: Teresa
Haynes recently submitted her 100th research paper! What an accomplishment!
Vanderbilt Sabbatical and
other Don News: Don Hong spent the 2001-02 year on sabbatical in the
Mathematics Department at Vanderbilt University. He returned last summer to work on projects in the Statistics
Department at Vandy. He has also
edited several volumes of papers in approximation theory, wavelets and splines
over the last few years.
To conclude, it is not too
often that one sees a Department of Mathematics that is so efficient in
providing so many services and programs to the University, the Community and
the Profession. We hope to continue to be a model department in the College of
Arts and Sciences and at ETSU.
Do take the time to browse
through this site. Read the newsletter edited by Dr. Kerley. Notice how much
research our faculty members and students (graduate and undergraduate) do.
Learn about the REU program in our department. And do return for a virtual (or
real) visit whenever you get a chance!
Feel free to contact me by telephone (423-429-5359) or by e-mail (godbolea@mail.etsu.edu) if I can help
in any way.