Dr. George Ashline

After our Commencement exercises in mid-May and the graduation of nine accomplished mathematics majors, we have reached the end of another productive, stimulating academic year. Our graduates are planning to build upon their undergraduate experiences in various ways, ranging from graduate school in mathematics and statistics to employment in the actuarial field.

Speaking of employment, it is worth noting that once again many of the top rated jobs in 2011 require significant mathematical abilities and skills. For example, please visit the Jobs Rated 2011 top 10 list, in which the top 5 positions need advanced education in mathematics.

For information on what some of our current students and graduates are up to, please see some of our student and alumni profiles available on our departmental webpage. This summer, we have students participating in grant-supported undergraduate research both on campus and at other institutions.

This past year, we welcomed a new tenure track member to the department, namely Professor Philip Yates. After completing his Ph.D. in Statistics at the University of South Carolina and teaching at Cal Poly Pomona for several years, Professor Yates taught a range of classes for us last year, including a 400-level Statistical Inference course which we have been unable to offer in a number of years. As the College and Department transitions to a new curriculum in the fall, Professor Yates is designing a new course in Applied Regression which will further enhance our course options for students.

Speaking of our new curriculum, our Mathematics major and minor requirements have been modified. View an outline of what is planned for requirements.

We enjoy hearing from mathematics graduates (both recent and not so recent). Please stay in touch! And please consider sharing your post-Saint Michael’s experiences among our alumni spotlights. Thank you in advance for your support!

a – Pi Mu Epsilon member and co-President of Vermont Alpha chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon

b – Pi Mu Epsilon member

c – Phi Beta Kappa member

d – Delta Epsilon Sigma member

e – Class Valedictorian

Brittany Baker ’11: Selected to participate in the competitive program for Women and Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University from May 16-27, 2011, followed by the competitive Bridge Program at Texas A & M University from Jun. 26-Jul. 30, 2011. The former intensive 11-day mentoring program for undergraduate and graduate women in mathematics brings together research mathematicians and students to address issues of gender imbalance in mathematics and includes lectures/seminars on mathematical topics and discussions on peer relations and career opportunities. The latter program is intended for 15 students entering graduate school in mathematics in the fall to supplement their knowledge to be better prepared for first year graduate work.

Jaqui Tuthill ’12:  Selected to participate in the competitive statistics REU program at Claremont Colleges in California from Jun. 6-Jul. 29, 2011. At this REU, 10 students are funded to work with three faculty members from Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd and Pomona Colleges for the eight week clinic. Students work on an exciting research project in mathematics, participate in workshops to inform them about mathematical science careers, and are encouraged to present their findings at a mathematical or statistical professional society meeting.

 Jason DeCoteau ’12:  Selected to participate in on-campus research during the summer of 2011 with Prof. Patrick Walsh of the Economics Department funding by the Social Science Research Center (SSRC). He is researching per capita Medicare expenditures and trying to find any patterns in why some areas spend more per person than other areas. He is considering both the demographics of these areas and also how the Medicare expenditures are being spent to see if certain demographics can explain some of the variation, such as if an area with a high poverty rate spends more per person on Medicare. Then he is also looking at how the Medicare benefits are being disbursed to see how an area that spends a large amount on Medicare expenditures per capita spends their money, such as on outpatient services, inpatient services, or on laboratory services, etc. Thus, does an area that spends a large amount per person allot a significant percentage of per capita Medicare benefits on outpatient services, or some other type of service, and can the way an area disburses Medicare benefits explain any of the variation in spending? He is focusing on the areas that spend the most, and the least amount of per capita Medicare expenditures, in order to see if he can learn anything about the differences between high and low spending areas, and hopefully determine a pattern that suggests a way to be a low spending area.

Katie Heath ’14: Selected to participate in the competitive summer mathematics pre-REU program on “Signal and Image Analysis” at Texas A & M University during Jun. 26-Jul. 30, 2011.  As technology becomes more sophisticated, the need for efficiently handling vast amounts of data has grown tremendously. This pre-REU program will introduce the basic ideas behind Fourier analysis and wavelets, the two main tools used to analyze signals and images. As time goes on, the students will break up into groups and work on projects involving real-world examples.

On campus collaboration in undergraduate research in the area of graph theoretical self-assembly design strategies has continued with four mathematics undergraduates during the 2010-2011 academic year, under the direction of Professors Ellis-Monaghan and Greta Pangborn from the Computer Science Department. Several papers, posters, and talks at academic meetings resulted from these collaborative efforts, and students wrote reflections on their experiences. This work was supported by an REU supplement to NSF Grant No. 1001408.

In 2011, Professor Ellis-Monaghan became Editor-in-Chief of the journal PRIMUS: Problems Resources and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies.

Professors Ashline, Ellis-Monaghan, and Zsu Kadas from the Mathematics Department and Declan McCabe from the Biology Department published a centerfold poster and accompanying “Math and Bio 2010” article on Modeling Seashell Morphology in the Jun.-Jul. 2010 edition of MAA FOCUS, the newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America.

During the spring semester, Professor Lloyd Simons mentored and supervised Andrew Gilbert ’11 in his honors thesis work in Galois Theory/Abstract Algebra. In May 2011, Andrew presented “Computing Galois Groups” in which he described an approach to a fundamental problem in the field: given a polynomial with rational numbers as coefficients, how does one go about finding its associated Galois group?

Professor Phil Yates presented “Instructor Characteristics Associated with Improved Student Attitudes Toward Statistics” at the Statistics Colloquium at UVM in Nov. 2010 and the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS) inCary,NCin May 2011.

Both Students and Faculty participated in April, 2011 Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at Skidmore College.

Professor George Ashline and Professor Ellis-Monaghan have continued to give invited talks and workshops at schools in Vermontthrough the Vermont State Math Coalition’s Expanding Horizons program. For example, Prof. Ashline presented “Exponential Functions in Snowflakes, Carpets, and Paper Folding” at Enosburg Falls High School and South Burlington High School in Dec. 2010 and “Correlation Properties and Applications” at Franklin Elementary School in May 2011.

Kaiti Tuthill ’11 published the article “Constraint Consensus Methods for Finding Interior Feasible Points in Second Order Cones” in the Journal of Applied Mathematics. Kaiti’s  joint research for this paper was done while working at a National Science Foundation-supported Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at Northern Arizona University inFlagstaff during the summer of 2010.

Mary Spuches ’12 gave at the talk “Design Optimization for DNA Nanostructures” at the national MAA Mathfest conference in Pittsburgh, PA in Aug. 2010.

September of 2010
Several undergraduates presented results from their summer undergraduate research work, including:

Brittany Baker ’11 and “Winning Combinations: Connecting Study Abroad to a Summer Program through Combinatorics”
Emily Pratt ’12 and “Trajectory Design Using a Linearized Restricted Three-Body Problem”
Mary Spuches ’12 “Signature Recognition: Wavelet Decomposition versus Fourier Analysis”
Kaiti Tuthill ’11 “Methods for Finding Near Feasible Points for a System of Constraints”

October 2010
Professor Thomas Hull fromWesternNew England College presented our annual Pi Mu Epsilon Lecture “Origami – Math is in the Creasing.”

November 2010
Patricia Cahn, Ph.D. candidate from Dartmouth College,  gave the Colloquium talk “Counting Self-Intersections of Loops on Surfaces.”

January 2011
Professor Richard Foote from UVM gave the Colloquium talk “Symmetry and the Monster: Mathematics as the Ultimate Complex System.”

March 2011
Professor  Debra Boutin from Hamilton College gave the Colloquium talk “Graphs and Symmetry.”

April 2011
Professor Tim Whiteford from the Education Department gave the Colloquium talk “Teaching Math to ELLs.” Also, Professor Jo Ellis-Monaghan has continued to serve as co-organizer/coordinator of the weekly Combinatorics Seminar jointly hosted by Saint Michael’s and theUniversity ofVermont.