Phelps recognized as one of the Top 25 Women Professors in Michigan

April 25, 2013 - Assistant professor of mathematics Christine Phelps was recently recognized as one of the Top 25 Women Professors in Michigan by Online Schools of Michigan. The goal of the top professors list is to highlight post-secondary educators who have been awarded recently for excellence in the classroom, on campus, and/or in the community.

The recipient of the 2012 CST Outstanding Teaching Award, Phelps has been a remarkable teacher since coming to CMU in 2009. She mostly teaches elementary-education mathematics courses and continually strives to improve learning, which is appreciated by her students. Phelps is also active in curriculum revision and mentoring doctoral students conducting projects in mathematics education research.

"I am honored to be recognized," Phelps said. "It is always my goal to be the best instructor I can be for my students."

Online Schools of Michigan exists to challenge the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to education and promotes the quest for learning styles that work best for unique individuals.

Mathematics major Karleigh Cameron receives Goldwater Honorable Mention

April 18, 2013 - Karleigh Cameron has received a Goldwater Honorable Mention. Cameron is a junior Honors student and Centralis Scholar from South Boardman majoring in applied mathematics and minoring in environmental studies.

About 150 Honorable Mentions are given to exceptional students each year who are not selected as Goldwater Scholars. According to the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program's website, 271 scholarships were awarded to sophomores and juniors from institutions across the United States. Scholars and Honorable Mentions were chosen from a field of 1,107 applicants.

Cameron participated in CMU's Long-term Undergraduate Research Experience (LURE) program in the summer of 2011, and conducted research on second generation wavelets with three other students and a faculty advisor.

She presented her work with LURE at a national and an international conference - MathFest in Lexington, Ky. and Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, Mass. The research was later published in the International Journal of Applied Mathematics.

Cameron entered the Summer Undergraduate Research in Experimental Mathematics (SURIEM) program at Michigan State University in May 2012. She worked with one other student and used bifurcation analyses to develop a more effective estimation technique for dynamical systems. She presented her work with SURIEM at MathFest 2012 in Madison, Wisc.

Cameron has also served as a mentor for HON 100: Introduction to Honors and as treasurer of Larzelere Hall, has been a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and plays on several intramural sports teams. She has worked as a tutor at the Mathematics Assistance Center, as a grader for the CMU Department of Mathematics, and as a desk receptionist in Larzelere Hall.

"I feel lucky to have gotten it," Cameron said. "It's really nice to know all my hard work has paid off, and it's nice to be recognized outside of my university."

Cameron said she hopes that being awarded an Honorable Mention will help her in the future when she applies to graduate schools and to jobs.

"Karleigh is very deserving of this recognition of an Honorable Mention from the Goldwater program," Dr. Lisa DeMeyer, one of Cameron's former professors, wrote in an email. "Karleigh enjoys a challenge and is doing everything she can to make the most of the opportunities she has at CMU. I have known Karleigh since her first semester at CMU and I am so happy that she is receiving this recognition for her outstanding academic work in mathematics."

After returning from Singapore, where she is spending the semester studying at Nanyang Technological University, Cameron will do research for her senior Honors research project, modeling growth using dynamical models. She will be working with Dr. Leela Rakesh in the Department of Mathematics.

"I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have been nominated in the first place, and to actually have gotten an Honorable Mention is great," Cameron said, "and I'm thankful for everyone who has helped me along the way."

Cameron plans to go to graduate school for engineering or applied mathematics and work for government or industry.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986, and is the namesake of Barry M. Goldwater, who served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years. The award is given annually to approximately 300 college sophomores and juniors who demonstrate excellence in their fields and are committed to pursuing a career in mathematics, engineering or natural sciences. Each institution is permitted to nominate up to four candidates each year.

Cameron's Goldwater Honorable Mention is CMU's first in five years.

Sir Timothy Gowers delivered Fleming Lecture series

Sir Timothy Gowers delivered two lectures as part of the second Fleming Lecture series that was held from April 2-3. His lectures focused on the topics of "Will computers ever be able to have interesting mathematical ideas?" and "Combinatorial theorems in sparse random sets."

Gowers is a Royal Society Research Professor at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University, where he also holds the Rouse Ball chair, and is a Fellow of Trinity College. He works in combinatorics, combinatorial number theory and in the theory of Banach spaces, and has made fundamental contributions to these fields.

CMU Professor Emeritus Richard Fleming founded The Fleming Lecture Series upon his retirement in 2007. The object 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.

Terence Tao gave inaugural Fleming Lecture

Terence Tao, professor of mathematics at UCLA and winner of the Crafoord Prize in 2012 and Fields Medal in 2006, gave the inaugural Fleming Lecture at CMU on April 18 and 19, 2012.