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MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER

From the Chair

Math Department Picnic, August 2014

It has been another exciting year in the Department of Mathematics. Dr. S. R. Srinivasa

Varadhan delivered the 3rd annual Fleming Lecture series in April, 2014. We are pleased to

announce that this year the Fleming Lecture Series will be given by Dr. Béla Bollobás. He will

present two lectures on April 9 and 10, 2015. We also launched an annual special colloquium

series this year. Three distinguished speakers have been invited to present talks this year.

Our programs were under review. Dr. Roger Verhey (Director of Center for Mathematics

Education, University of Michigan-Dearborn), Dr. John Bailer (Chair of Department of

Statistics, Miami University), and Dr. Raul Curto (Executive Associate Dean, College of

Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Iowa) were invited to review our programs. All external

reviews provided us with valuable material for reflection. Each area of our programs has

identified a list of actions as a result of the program review, revisited preliminary SWOT

analysis and made several changes. Summary ratings of quality, size and funding are also

obtained by each area. We will enhance our programs accordingly and maintain a

contemporary curriculum that ensures quality and excellence.

The REU program continues to attract talented undergraduates; eleven undergraduate

students came from eleven different institutions in the US. This year's program was led by

Sivaram Narayan, Debraj Chakrabarti, Kahadawala Cooray, Yeonhyang Kim, and CMU alumni

Lon Mitchell. Our student organizations continued to be very active; their advisors, Sivaram

Narayan, John Daniels and Mohamed Amezziane have provided their activity reports for

Kappa Mu Epsilon, Gamma Iota Sigma and the Statistics Club respectively. It has been the

most productive year in terms of Ph.D. graduates. Ten students successfully defended their

Ph.D. in 2013-2014. Finally, we welcomed seventeen new graduate students to the department

in Fall 2014.

I would like to thank the Newsletter Committee, Juli Arndt, Donna Ahlers and Kristin Ewald

for their efforts in putting the newsletter together. To our alumni, we thank you for your

continued support, and we wish you all the best in the coming year.

Respectfully,

En-Bing Lin

Mathematics Department Newsletter

2014-2015

In This Issue:

Fleming Lectures 2015 Page 2

Problem of the Week

STEM - Student Features

Page 3

Page 3

Special Colloquium Series

NSF REU

KME

Gamma Iota Sigma

Statistics Club

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 7

Faculty Awards and

Promotions

Page 8

Ph.D. and Master’s

Graduates

Page 9,10

Mathematics Awards and

Scholarships

Page 11, 12

New Funded Graduate Students

Page 13,14

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Béla Bollobás to be Fourth Fleming

Lecture Series Speaker, in April

2015 The fourth Fleming Lecture will take place on April 9 & 10, 2015. The

Fleming Lecture Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the Richard Fleming

Endowed Speaker Award and the Mathematics Department. This year our

speaker will be Dr. Béla Bollobás. He will present two lectures entitled:

“Bootstrap Percolation” and “Universality for Monotone Cellular

Automata”.

Dr. Bollobás is currently Professor; Chair of Excellence, at the University of Memphis. He is known for his

work in combinatorics, particularly in graph theory. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity

College.

Dr. Béla Bollobás is a Hungarian-born British mathematician who has worked in various areas of

mathematics, including functional analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, and percolation. Paul Erdős has

been his academic influence and inspiration ever since he was 14. As a student, he took part in the first three

International Mathematical Olympiads, winning two gold medals. Paul Erdős invited Bollobás to a lunch

after hearing about his accomplishments and they kept in touch since then. His first publication was a

joint publication with Erdős on extremal problems in graph theory that was written when he was in high

school in 1962.

With Erdős’s recommendation to Harold Davenport and Bollobás’ long campaigning to get permission from

the Communist authorities, Bollobás was able to spend a year in Cambridge, England during his

undergraduate studies. However, his return to Cambridge again to complete his Ph.D. upon an offer from the

university was denied by the Communist authorities. A following scholarship offer from Paris was also

rejected by the authorities. He wrote his first doctorate in discrete geometry under the supervision of László

Fejes Tóth and Paul Erdős in Budapest University, 1967, after which he spent a year in Moscow with Israïl

Moiseevich Gelfand. After spending a year at Christ Church, Oxford where Michael Atiyah held the Savilian

Chair of Geometry, and vowing never to return to Hungary due to his disillusion with the 1956 Soviet

intervention and subsequent puppet communist regime, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where in

1972 he received a second Ph. D. in functional analysis (on Banach algebras) under the supervision of Frank

Adams. In 1970, he was awarded a fellowship to the college.

Bollobás’ awards and honors include:

o External Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

o The Senior Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society, 2007

o Fellow of the Royal Society, 2011

o Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, 2012

FOR MORE INFORMATION

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Béla_Bollobás

CMU Professor Emeritus Richard Fleming founded The Fleming Lecture Series upon this retirement

in 2007. The objective of the series is to bring speakers to CMU to present lectures on topics of general

interest in mathematics or lectures of special interest to mathematics students and faculty.

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Problem of the Week

Problems are posted every Monday on a bulletin board outside of the Mathematics Department office. Students are

given one week to submit solutions. Undergraduate students who submit correct solutions are eligible for prize

money. If there is only one correct solution, then the solver wins a prize of $10. If there are two correct solutions,

the prize money is split between the two solvers. If there are more than two correct solutions, then two of the

solvers are selected at random to split the prize money. If there are no correct solutions, the prize money rolls over,

and the prize for the next week will be $20. If there are no prize winners the following week, the prize keeps

increasing. The prize total has gone up to $50 on several occasions. Anyone is allowed to submit a solution, but

only CMU undergraduate students are eligible for prize money. We have several enthusiastic problem solvers

among the graduate students in the department. We started putting the Problem of the Week online in September

2014. You can find the problems on the web page: https://www.cmich.edu/colleges/cst/math/Pages/Problem-of-the-

Week.aspx. Alternately, you can Google “cmich problem of the week”.

Spotlight on seniors in Mathematics Working with statistics professor Felix Famoye, seniors Nicole

Feinauer and Devan Walworth conducted an extensive review of

our Actuarial Science Program. The two interviewed other

schools about their programs, contacted companies in the Midwest

about what they look for in job candidates, and surveyed our current

students and alumni about their opinions of the CMU program.

After analyzing the collected data, Feinauer and Walworth

developed a new plan for CMU’s Actuarial Science major that

presents solutions for common concerns identified by the current

CMU actuarial students, alumni, and Midwest companies. By

addressing specific concerns, the two hope to increase student

satisfaction and further strengthen program graduates to make

them more competitive. In November 2014, Feinauer and Walworth

presented their research findings to faculty and students, which

included the creation of a new major map, seminar course, and a

two-track major.

Some History of CMU Actuarial Program:

In the mid 1980s Gene Chang, an actuary and CEO of an insurance company, and another insurance executive

approached Shu-Ping Hodgson, a statistics faculty member in the Mathematics Department, about the possibility

of CMU offering an actuarial science major. Shu-ping shepherded the development of an Actuarial Science major

and it was implemented in the mid to late 1980s. The first graduate of the program was in the late 1980s. Gene

currently (2015) is in an actuarial science position with a consulting firm in Chicago.

Tom Miles, a Mathematics faculty member, took over as advisor in the late 1980s and continued in this role until

his retirement in 2007. At that time John Daniels took over as advisor. Subsequently Kahadawala Cooray was

added to the faculty and developed preparation courses for Exam FM (Financial Mathematics) and Exam MLC

(Mathematics of Life Contingency) conducted by Society of Actuaries. Tom has made outstanding contributions

to the success of this program. In the early years there were 15-20 majors with 2-8 graduates per year. Now there

are over 40 majors and often double digits in graduates.

The Problem of the Week competition was started by Drs. Yury

Ionin and Sivaram Narayan in January 1995. Each year 25 problems

were presented to the students during Spring and Fall semesters.

Yury took over Problem of the Week from 1997 and continued it

until his retirement in December 2007. Dr. Sidney Graham has been

running the competition since January 2008.

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Special Colloquium Series and Collaborator Visits 2014- 2015

We have launched an annual special colloquium series this year. Three speakers have been invited. Their

talks are scheduled as follows:

3/3/2015: Zalman Usiskin

Director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project.

Recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from

the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

3/19/2015: Robert C. delMas

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

4/2/2015: William Fulton

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

U of M Oscar Zariski Distinguished University Professor.

AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, 2010.

Henry Russel Lecturer, outstanding achievements in research and teaching, 2005.

Beginning last year we started to have a collaborator visit program. Each visitor presents at least one talk

during the visit. This academic year we have the following collaborator visits and their presentation dates

are:

11/10/2014 Jung-Chen Liu, National Taiwan Normal University

11/18/2014 Isola Ajiferuke, University of Western Ontario

01/22/2015 Kasso Okoudjou, University of Maryland

02/05/2015 Jungho Yoon Ewha, Womens University, South Korea

03/05/2015 Shyamal Peddada, NIH

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NSF REU 2014 By: Sivaram Narayan

The National Science Foundation (NSF)

Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)

site program at Central Michigan University

began in the summer of 2002. The goal of the

REU is to stimulate talented undergraduates to

learn new mathematics by working on

challenging, unsolved research problems.

Professor Sivaram Narayan received a 3-year grant of $283,537 for the period 2012-14. During summer 2014,

eleven students participated in the REU program. Drs. Debraj Chakrabarti, Kahadawala Cooray, Yeonhyang

Kim and Lon Mitchell were the faculty mentors for the summer.

REU program has so far worked with 147 students (72 men, 75 women), of which 107 students have been

supported by the NSF-REU grants, 30 students from CMU have been supported by CMU Summer Research

Scholarships or REU matching funds from the Dean of the College of Science and Technology, and 10

students have received support from their own institution.

The 2014 participants were:

Evan Castle, University of Kentucky

Isabel Corona, Metropolitan State University of Denver

Rachel Domagalski, Central Michigan University

David Gunderman, Wabash College, IN

Carolynn Johnson, Middlebury College, VT

Dana Lacey, North Central College, IL

Ellen Lehet, State University of New York at Potsdam

Anh Nguyen, Texas Christian University

Dylan O’Connell, Haverford College, PA

Hong Suh, Pomona College, CA

Xingyu Zhang, Penn State University

Rachel Domagalski presented a poster at the

AMS-MAA-SIAM Joint meeting in San Antonio,

January 2015. All other REU students also gave

either oral or poster presentation at the meeting.

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Kappa Mu Epsilon (KME) Report By: Sivaram Narayan

Kappa Mu Epsilon Math

Honor Society Michigan Beta

Chapter

2014 Report

(KME Faculty Advisors: Drs. Sivaram K. Narayan and Meera G. Mainkar) During the academic semesters KME met once every two weeks. Five new members were inducted in the

spring of 2014. During February, members raised money through a used book sale held jointly with other

student organizations in the department. KME members sold travel mugs and t-shirts for Pi day (March 14). A

fundraising event was organized through the Italian Oven restaurant in April 2014. The money raised from

these events and membership dues was used for buying pizza on meeting days and for conducting an induction

ceremony.

.

List of Activities for 2014:

1. Five KME members and faculty advisor Narayan attended the Michigan Undergraduate

Mathematics Conference (MUMC) at Eastern Michigan University on March 8, 2014.

2. Professor Hugh Montgomery, University of Michigan, gave a talk on March 6, 2014. The title of his

talk was “Peg Solitaire.”

3. Dr. Ben Salisbury, CMU, gave a talk titled “Representation of the Symmetric Group” on March 20,

2014.

4. Four KME members attended the KME National Convention at Jacksonville State University,

Jacksonville, Alabama from April 9-12, 2014.

5. Professor Robert L. Devaney, Professor of Mathematics at Boston University and the President of

Mathematical Association of America gave a talk on April 16, 2014. The title of his talk was “The

Fractal Geometry of the Mandelbrot Set.”

6. KME members raised money to support the “Special Olympics” event by selling medallions.

7. On Friday, April 25 (Grace Friday), 1-5 pm, KME members held a Math-a-palooza event and tutored

undergraduate students before the final exams.

8. Dr. Narayan gave 15-20 minute talks on various topics in mathematics and its applications during many

meetings in both the spring and fall semesters.

9. A DVD show, “The Great Pi/e Debate: Which is the better number” was held on October 2, 2014.

10. Dr. Tibor Marcinek, CMU, gave a talk on October 16, 2014. It was titled, “Model-Centered Learning:

Creating Visual Mathematical Models with GeoGebra.”

11. Five members took part in the 20th Annual Michigan Autumn Take Home (MATH) Challenge on

November 1, 2014.

12. On November 13, 2014, Rachel Domagalski gave a talk on her summer 2014 REU research project on

“Frames in Finite Dimensions.” It was also an informational meeting about summer research

opportunities.

13. Math-a-palooza took place on December 5, 2014 from 1-5 p.m. KME members tutored

undergraduate students to prepare for their final exams

14. On December 6, 2014, three KME members took part in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics

Competition.

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Gamma Iota Sigma (GIS) Report Officers: Co-Presidents: Christina Dork and Lauren Lafountain Secretary: Jared Leach Treasurer: Sarah Mok Alumni/Industry Relations: Joanna Hampton

Fundraising and Philanthropy: Kelly Twigg

Public Relations: Blake Ryan

Co-Membership Involvement: Aziz Ghandorah and Shivam Patel

SGA Representative: Molly McNees

We currently have 31 registered members.

Semester's Events:

Our chapter hosted various workshops to prepare for the conference including dress code, interview, resume,

business card etiquette, networking, and career fair workshops. We also hosted an event with Statistics Club

and KME promoting Math-related Majors and Clubs (Math Major and Club Awareness Night). 19 Members

attended the Annual Gamma Iota Sigma Management Conference held in Dallas, Texas. I believe this is the

most who have ever attended from our chapter. Many of those members are applying and scheduling

interviews with companies and will no doubt obtain an internship or job offer. Many company representatives

came and visited us such as Farmers Insurance, Auto-Owners Insurance, Plante Moran, and Jackson National

Life. This of course includes Towers Watson who annually comes and talks about the opportunities they offer

in a more informal setting. We have participated in a few community service events with the Mobile Food

Pantry. During the final examination week, members volunteered to help tutor college students struggling in

math-related classes with KME and Statistics Club. Furthermore, we have had successful fundraisers at La

Senoritas and selling Pizza Kits.

Statistics Club Report

By Mohamed Amezziane

The Statistics Club meets every Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. The club's President is Nicole Feinauer, Vice-

President is Devan Walworth and Secretary is Ben Robinson.

The Statistics Club is building a framework for market strategy improvement that can be used by small

businesses. The construction of this framework is achieved through customer survey design and analysis of

questionnaire response data. To implement this project, the Statistics Club is using a local small business,

Painted Turtle, as a model. To assist this local pottery shop, the Club members are gathering data on both

current customers and potential customers. Survey questionnaires were handed out to the first group in

store, while the latter are the target of an online survey. In addition to demographic and education factors,

the surveys inquires mainly about the subjects' familiarity with the downtown area geography and interest

in the service provided by the pottery, which Painted Pottery seem to think might be significant factors in

discerning potential customers. Once the data collection phase is over, the Club members will start

analyzing the gathered information with the purpose of conducting a market segmentation by identifying

different customer groups in the local population and to determine important factors that determine the

customer attitude towards the business patronage.

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Faculty Awards and Promotions Promotions, Tenure and Awards:

This past year Chin-Yi Jean Chan, Kahadawala Cooray, Yeonhyang Kim, and Christine Phelps were promoted to the

rank of Associate Professor. Chin-Yi Jean Chan and Xiaoming Zheng achieved tenure.

Katrina Piatek-Jimenez received a 10-year award

5-year awards were given to Reggie Becker, Chin-I Cheng, Christine Phelps and Xiaoming Zheng.

Carl Lee is the recipient of the 2014 College of Science & Technology Award for Outstanding Research. Carl was

nominated for the U.S. Professor of the Year Award and the 2014 Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year

Award.

Sivaram Narayan is the recipient of the 2014 College of Science & Technology Award for Outstanding Professional

Service. Sivaram is the first person in the College of Science & Technology to have earned all three CST awards

(teaching, research & service).

Felix Famoye has been elected as a 2014 Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) for his significant

contributions to the statistics profession. The number of recipients is limited to no more than one-third of 1% of the

ASA membership each year.

Dr. Felix Famoye was awarded a Fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship

Program to travel to Nigeria to work with the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria on training and

mentoring of graduate students, collaborative research in statistics with faculty members, and

hosting workshops on statistical packages. This project will involve teaching and serving as

Adviser to MS and PhD students in statistics. It will involve organizing and conducting

workshops for the university community on the use of SPSS statistical package. Also, the Fellow

will engage in the curriculum revision of the MS in Statistics as well as participate in statistical

consulting for the university community. The host faculty member is Professor Toyin Ogundipe.

The University of Lagos' project is one of 59 projects that will pair African Diaspora scholars

with higher education institutions in Africa to collaborate on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching,

training and mentoring activities. Felix Famoye is one of 60 African Diaspora scholars who have been awarded

Fellowships to travel to Africa beginning in December 2014 to conduct the projects, which span an impressive range

of fields across the arts and humanities, social sciences, education, sciences, technology, engineering and

mathematics.

The winning projects in this second round of awards were submitted by 47 institutions in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria,

South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

Dr. Debraj Chakrabarti, was recently awarded a Simons Foundation Collaboration

Grant. Supported by the Simons Foundation's Division for Mathematics and Physical Sciences,

Simons Foundation Collaboration Grants support the ‘mathematical marketplace' by stimulating

collaboration between accomplished mathematicians actively participating in research through the

funding of travel and travel related expenditures.

With this grant, Dr. Chakrabarti and his collaborators: Dr. Mei-Chi Shaw, Mathematics Professor at

the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Yunus Zeytuncu, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at

the University of Michigan at Dearborn, Dr. Rasul Shafikov, Associate Professor of Mathematics at

the University of Western Ontario, Canada, Dr. Christine Laurent, Mathematics Professor at Joseph

Fourier University/University of Grenoble I, France, and Dr. Siqi Fu, Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University,

will continue their collaborative research on the functions of Several Complex Variables.

"This is a generalization of the calculus of several variables that we teach at CMU to math and science students,"

said Dr. Chakrabarti. "The main difference is the introduction of a new kind of number called a complex number

instead of the everyday 'real numbers' used in calculus. An example of a complex number is the square root of

negative one. While there is no real number whose square is negative, there is a complex number with this property."

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2014 Ph.D. and Master’s Graduates Ahmad Alzaghal successfully defended his dissertation in December 2013. Ahmad’s Thesis

title was “Families of Exponentiated Generalized Distributions: Properties and

Applications.” His Ph.D. Advisors were Drs. Felix Famoye, and Carl Lee. Ahmad received

his Ph.D. in May 2014 and is a faculty member at State University of New York at

Oswego.

Mohammad Aljarrah successfully defended his dissertation in January 2014. Mohammad’s

Thesis title was “System of Continuous Distributions Generated from Quantile Functions.”

His Ph.D. Advisors were Drs. Felix Famoye, and Carl Lee. Mohammad received his

Ph.D. in May 2014 and accepted a position as a full time faculty at Tafila Technical

University in Jordan.

Cleland Loszewski successfully defended his dissertation in February 2014. The Title of

his dissertation was “The Symplectic Volume of the Ribbon Graph Complex.” His Ph.D.

Advisor was Dr. Brad Safnuk. Cleland received his Ph.D. in May 2014 and is currently

employed as a Senior Data Analyst at Capital One Financial in Richmond, Virginia.

Yadu Gautam successfully defended his dissertation in February 2014. The title of his

dissertation was “Novel approach for Imputing Association Statistics for Genome Wide

Association Studies.” His Ph.D. Advisors were Drs. Chen-I Cheng and Carl Lee. Yadu

received his Ph.D. in May 2014 and is hired as a fixed term faculty in our department for

the current academic year.

Azza Abu Shams successfully defended her dissertation in May 2014. The title of her

dissertation was “An Approximation to Nonlinear Coupled Reaction-Diffusion Equation

Using Adomian Decomposition Method and Fractional Operators.” Azza received her

Ph.D. in August 2014. Her Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. Leela Rakesh. Azza has been hired as

an Assistant Professor in Effat University in Jeddah Saudi Arabia.

Yousef Al-Jarrah successfully defended his dissertation in May 2014. The title of his

dissertation was “Wavelet Based method for Solving Integral Equations and

Applications.” His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. En-Bing Lin. He received his Ph.D. degree in

August 2014. Yousef accepted a faculty position at Tafila Technical University in Jordan.

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Mohammad Zannon successfully defended his dissertation in May 2014. The title of his

dissertation was “Third Order Shear Deformation Theory of Free Vibration of Cylindrical

Thick Shed.” His Ph.D. Advisor was Dr. Leela Rakesh. Mohammad received his Ph.D.

degree in August 2014. Mohammad accepted a faculty position at Tafila Technical

University in Jordan.

Pedro Diaz successfully defended his dissertation in July 2014 and graduated with a Ph.D. in

December 2014. The title of his dissertation is "On the Delta Conjecture and the Graph

Complement Conjecture for Minimum Semi-definite Rank of a Graph". His Ph.D. Advisor was

Dr. Sivaram K. Narayan. Pedro is currently employed as a faculty member of mathematics at the

University of Costa Rica.

Hazem Al-Mofleh successfully defended his dissertation in July 2014. The title of his

dissertation was “Robust Variogram Fitting Using non-Linear Rank-based Estimators”. His

Dissertation advisor was Dr. John Daniels. Hazem received his Ph.D. in December 2014.

Hazem is a faculty member at Tafila Technical University in Jordan.

Ansam Al-Aqtash successfully defended her dissertation in July 2014. Her thesis title was

“The Minimum semidefinite Rank of Signed Graphs.” Her Ph.D. Advisor was Dr.

Sivaram K. Narayan. Ansam received her Ph.D. in December 2014. Ansam is a fixed-

term faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at Marshall University, West

Virginia.

Masters Graduates: Anna Schneider successfully defended her Master Thesis in February 2014.

The title of her Thesis was “The Annihilating –Ideal Graph of Semigroups”. Her Thesis Advisor was

Dr. Lisa DeMeyer.

Chen Mu continued his doctoral study in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Florida State University.

Peng Shen continued his doctoral study in Economics at Indiana University.

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Mathematics Awards and Scholarships

The Awards Ceremony was held on April 17, 2014 in Pearce Hall Hosted by

Department Chair En-Bing Lin.

Professor Donna Ericksen presented the Whitmore award

Professor Chin-I Cheng presented the Richtmeyer – Foust award

Professor Lisa DeMeyer presented the Mathematics Department Scholarships

Professor Sivaram Narayan presented the Hammel KME award

Professors Kahadawala Cooray & John Daniels presented the Miles Actuarial Award

Outstanding Teaching Assistant awards were presented by Mrs. Julia Burch

Outstanding Tutoring awards were presented by Mr. Reggie Becker

Richtmeyer-Foust Mathematics Award

The Richtmeyer-Foust Award was inaugurated in 1968 by the Mathematics Department to honor Dr. Cleon C. Richtmeyer

and Dr. Judson W. Foust. Dr. Richtmeyer served as Department Chair and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Foust served as Professor of Mathematics and later as President of the University.

This award is given to the outstanding senior majoring or minoring in mathematics. After an initial screening, the

department chooses a group of finalists who are asked to submit information about their academic and their extra-

curricular accomplishments and to write an essay discussing how their experiences at CMU have influenced them. A

faculty vote determines the recipient, who receives a plaque, and his/her name is engraved on a trophy kept in a

showcase in Pearce Hall. The 2014 recipient, Karleigh Cameron, was the 56th student to receive the Richtmeyer-Foust

Award. The 2014 finalists for the award were Peter Jaworski, Hillary Mahoney, and Tyler Wippel.

Edward H. Whitmore Mathematics Award

The Edward H. Whitmore Award in Elementary Mathematics was established in 1990 by the Mathematics Department

in honor of Dr. Edward H. Whitmore, who served the department for twenty-two years as Professor of Mathematics,

fifteen of which were spent as Chairman of the department. The distinct differences in the mathematics program for

elementary teachers make it appropriate for those students to be eligible for an award especially for them. The winner,

who is chosen in a manner similar to that of the Richtmeyer-Foust Award, receives a plaque, and his/her name is

engraved on a trophy kept in a showcase in Pearce Hall. The 2014 recipient for this award was Kristine Stafford. She

was the 31st student to receive the Whitmore Award. The 2014 finalists for this award were Jillian Carey and Lyndsey

Versteegden.

Arnold Hammel KME Award

This award was created for mathematics majors who are KME (Kappa Mu Epsilon) members to honor retired Professor

and former KME Advisor Arnold Hammel. Jocelyn Faydenko, William Persall and Jessica Willson were the 2014

recipients.

Jozefaciuk and Rutkowski Award

As a tribute to Frank and Rita Jozefaciuk and Irene Rutkowski, their family created this endowed award for junior or

senior mathematics majors with a minimum GPA of 3.4. The 2014 recipient of this award was Steven Zajac.

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Miller Award

In honor of retired Professor William Miller and his wife, Delores Miller, this award was established for students

who are juniors with a mathematics, statistics, or actuarial science major. Elizabeth VanderWall received the 2014

award.

Richtmeyer Scholarship

Dr. Cleon C. Richtmeyer bequeathed a scholarship fund for students who are mathematics majors. The 2014 recipients

were Emily Howard, Temitope Nathan, Paige Rogers, Cal Salisbury and Steven Zajac.

Serier Scholarship

In honor of Professor Lester H. Serier and his son, Jack D. Serier, this endowed memorial was established for junior or

senior mathematics majors with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. The 2014 recipient was Casey Ferranti.

St. Andre Scholarship

Former College of Science and Technology Dean and Mathematics Professor Richard St. Andre and his wife, Karen,

created this scholarship for sophomore students with majors in the Mathematics Department. McKenna Jerant and

Joanna Sarkozi were the 2014 recipients of this scholarship.

Whitmore Scholarship

To commemorate the lives of Dr. Edward H. Whitmore and his son, Stephen H. Whitmore, an endowment was

established by the family and friends for mathematics majors who have been admitted to the Teacher Education

program. Breanna Bowen and Emily Howard were the 2014 recipients of this scholarship.

Miles Actuarial Award

Retired Professor Thomas Miles and his wife, Cindy Miles, created this award to help defray the expenses for students

taking and passing Actuarial Exams. The 2014 recipients were Nick Cracchiolo, Nicole Feinauer, Kaley Holloway,

Peter Jaworski, Kelly MacDonald, Julianna Makrinos, Devan Walworth and Jessica Willson.

Outstanding Tutoring Awards

The 2014 Awards for outstanding tutoring went to Kaley Holloway, Peng Shen and Oluremi Abaoyomi, with

Honorable Mentions going to Karleigh Cameron, Alex Lindstrom and David Grollimund.

Outstanding Teaching Assistant

Patrick Davis received the 2014 award for outstanding Ph.D. Teaching Assistant - 2nd year with Honorable Mention

going to Kenneth Goward. Matthew Barco received the outstanding Teaching Assistant award for Ph.D. students,

beyond 2nd year, with Honorable Mention going to Adam Moreno.

Dr. Frederick C. and Lois M. Kabbe Scholarship

A renewable award for a student enrolled in chemistry or mathematics with a minimum GPA of 3.0. Preference is

given to a part-time or full-time single parent household graduating from Isabella County or contiguous county high

school. The 2014 recipient was Jocelyn Faydenko.

Nikoline A. Bye Endowed Award.

An award for a student enrolled in the College of Science and Technology who is a second semester junior or senior

with a GPA of 3.6 or higher in the mathematics major, has at least one year left before graduation, and has been

admitted to the teacher education program. Preference is given to a mathematics major on the elementary curriculum.

The 2014 recipient was Courtney McGregor.

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2014-2015 Funded Graduate Students

Elyas Al-Gharaibeh is working on a Ph.D. He earned a Master's Degree in Mathematics

from Yarmouk Uniaversity in Jordan in 2011 and received his Bachelor's Degree in

Mathematics from The Irbid National University in Jordan in 2004.

Mary Baker is working on her Master’s degree in Mathematics. She earned her Bachelor

of Science degree in Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in 2009.

Kimberley Cadogan is working on Ph.D in Mathematics. Kimberley earned a Master of

Philosophy in Mathematics from the University of West Indies (Barbados) in 2012 and

received her Bachelor's Degree in Science Economics and Mathematics also from

University of the West Indies (Barbados) in 2007.

Bryan Crouch is working on his PhD. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from

Northern Illinois University in 2009.

Alyssa Finch is working on her Master’s degree in Mathematics. She earned her

Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at Ferris State University in 2014.

Jordan Gill graduated from Spring Arbor University with a Bachelor’s of Arts in

December of 2011. He is a first-year graduate student at CMU who is pursuing a Master’s

Degree in Mathematics.

Nicole Gill is working on her Ph.D. in Mathematics. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in

Mathematics from Spring Arbor University in 2011 and her M.S. in Mathematics from

North Carolina State University in 2013.

Christopher Grow is working on his Ph.D. in Mathematics. He earned his Associate’s

degree at Grand Rapids Community College in 2009 and his Bachelor of Science in

Applied Mathematics from Grand Valley State University in 2014.

14

Wilson Gyasi is working on his Ph.D. in Mathematics. He earned his M.S. Degree at

Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2010 and his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics

from University of Cape Coast in 2006.

Hasan Isomitdinov is currently working on a Graduate Certificate in Data Mining. He

received his Bachelor's Degree Tashkent Institute of Finance in

Uzbekistan. Hasan earned a BSC in Accounting from Central Michigan University in

2014.

Monsikarn Jansrang is currently working on a Ph.D. in Mathematics. She earned her B.S.

Degree at Prince of Songkla University in Thailand in 2007.

Sean McMannamy is currently working on a Ph.D. He earned a Master's Degree in

Applied Mathematics from The University of North Carolina Ag & Tech in 2014 and

received his Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics from The University of North Carolina in

2011.

Matthew Plante is currently working on a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He received his

Associates Degree in Mathematics from Alpena Community College in 2010 and a

Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics from Grand Valley State University in 2012.

Caitlin Rowan is working on her Master’s in Mathematics. She earned her Associate’s in

Art degree in Mathematics from Craven Community College in 2012 and her B.S. in

Mathematics from East Carolina University in 2014.

Mohye Sweidan is working on his PhD. He started with us in the Fall of 2013. He received

his Bachelor’s degree in 2004 and his Master’s degree in 2006. Both degrees are from the

University of Jordan.

Breann Tunney is working on her Ph.D. in Mathematics. She earned her Bachelor of

Science degree in Mathematics from Saginaw Valley State University in 2010

Yifan Zhang is currently working on a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He graduated from Sichuan

University in China with a Bachelor’s of Science in 2007 and received his Master’s degree

in Mathematics from Central Michigan University in 2011.

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I want to support the students and

faculty in the Department of

Mathematics! My gift of $ is enclosed (Please

make checks payable to Central Michigan University).

DESIGNATED AS FOLLOWS:

Department of Mathematics Enhancement Fund

Other Funds (listed on the right)

Name

Mathematics

Department Newsletter

Central Michigan University

Pearce Hall 214

Mount Pleasant, MI 48859

Mathematics Enhancement

Nikoline Bye Endowed Award

Fleming Endowment in Mathematics

Arnold Hammel KME Endowment

Frank and Rita Jozefaciuk & Irene Rutkowski

Endowment

The Kabbe Endowment

Miles Actuarial Award

William and Delores Miller Endowment

Cleon C. Richtmeyer Endowment

Richard and Karen St. Andre Endowment

Lester H. and Jack D. Serier Endowment

Edward H. and Stephen H. Whitmore Endowment