2009 - Department of Mathematics

Chair’s Corner
by
C.S. Chen
The economic downturn of 2008-2009 is
unprecedented. Institutions worldwide have
experienced
different levels of
budget cuts. USM
is not an exception.
We received two
separate budget cuts
in fall 2008 and
spring
2009.
Furthermore, before
the fall semester of
2009 started, we
had an overall 4.5% budget cut. In terms of
the operation budget, we had a 10% cut
which presented serious challenges to the
daily operation of the department.
Fortunately, our department was well
prepared before this crisis. During the past
four years the department has progressed
quite remarkably. Enrollments in our classes
continue to rise (4.2%↑ in fall 2008 and
5.25%↑ in spring 2009). In terms of external
funding, our ranking at the college level has
dramatically improved. More and more
international scholars are coming to visit and
collaborate with our faculty members and
graduate students. More faculty members
are getting involved in the supervision of
undergraduate and graduate students. We
continue to perform well in the category of
teaching, the trademark of the Department
of Mathematics. As a result, we are well
prepared for the economic storm. Despite
the economic hardship, we will continue to
work diligently to meet our obligation to our
students.
Due to unexpected delays in construction,
our new Math Zone will unfortunately not
open until spring 2010. The new Math Zone
is a $1,000,000 state funded project to
expand our current Math Zone facilities. We
are patiently awaiting the completion of this
new facility which will contain five new
offices and one lecture room of 40 seats.
The new Math Zone will be capable of
housing 150 computers, providing a
computer-based learning and tutoring center
for Intermediate Algebra and College
Algebra.
The new Math Zone under construction
After serving twenty-four years in the
department, both Dr. Barry Piazza and Ms.
Lida McDowell retired in summer 2009. In
his last year at USM, Dr. Piazza received a
major grant in course redesign in the amount
of $100,000 as a principle investigator. Dr.
Piazza has been indispensable in his service
to the Department of Mathematics, and we
have high respect for his professional
contributions to the department.
Ms. McDowell is an excellent teacher and
critical to our program in math education.
She is eager to return in spring 2010 as an
emeritus instructor to teach MAT 101E, a
course designed and taught by her for many
years. See elsewhere in this newsletter for
more about Ms. McDowell.
The retirement party at Johnson State Park
Despite the tireless effort of the Hiring
Committee, we have not been able to fill the
position of the Cross Endowed Chair in
Mathematics during the past two years. We
were also not able to fill a position in Math
Education this year. Fortunately, we were
successful in hiring two assistant professors
in computational mathematics. Their
profiles appear elsewhere in this newsletter.
Four years after Hurricane Katrina, the
Department of Mathematics has become
stronger and more productive. We believe
that with hard work we shall meet the new
challenge posed by the current economic
storm and shall come out of it stronger than
ever.
Promotions and Awards
We would like to
congratulate Dr. Jose
Contreras for his
promotion to full
professor
effective
July 1, 2009. Dr.
Contreras
also
received the 2009
Teaching Award from
the College of Science
and Technology
Undergraduate
Research
and
Graduate
Faculty members are encouraged to get
students involved in research.
• Dr. John Perry is currently directing the
Honors theses of two undergraduate
students,
Lorrin
Debenport
and
Elisabeth Palchak, and the Master thesis
of Miao Yu. In addition, spring graduate
Ashley Sanders, under Dr. Perry’s
direction, solved two challenging
problems that had been published in the
MAA's College Math Journal.
• Dr. Haiyan Tian is the first faculty
member during the past four years to
successfully supervise a graduate
student (Andreas Grunewald) who
produced a Master thesis in fall 2008.
An undergraduate student (Chris Mills)
also successfully defended his Honors
thesis under Dr. Tian’s supervision in
spring 2009.
• Two graduate students (John Cleveland
and Corwin Stanford) completed their
Master theses under the supervision of
Dr. Jiu Ding and Dr. Joseph Kolibal
respectively in spring 2009.
• Dr. C.S. Chen is currently supervising
two Ph.D. students (Jeanette Monroe
and Guangming Yao).
New Faculty Members
Dr. James Lambers is a new assistant
professor in the department. Previously he
was an acting assistant professor in the
Department
of
Energy
Resources
Engineering and in the Institute for
Computational
and
Mathematical
Engineering at
Stanford
University. He
received
his
Ph.D. in 2003
at Stanford in
Scientific
Computing and
Computational
Mathematics
under the direction of Joseph Oliger and
Gene Golub. Dr. Lambers has also been a
mathematics lecturer at Iowa State
University and the University of California,
Irvine. His research interests include spectral
methods for variable-coefficient partial
differential
equations,
approximating
elements of functions of matrices using
Gaussian quadrature, coarse-scale modeling
of flow in porous media, and image
processing through nonlinear diffusion.
Dr. Huiqing Zhu is
a new assistant
professor in the
Department
of
Mathematics.
He
received a master
degree
in
Computational
Mathematics from
Zhengzhou University, China and his Ph.D.
in Applied Mathematics from Wayne State
University before he came to USM. His
research interests include Galerkin methods
and Discontinuous Galerkin methods for
singularly perturbed problems and the
superconvergence analysis for Galerkin
methods.
Ms. Lida McDowell Retires
Ms. Lida McDowell, who has served as an
Instructor in the Department of Mathematics
for the past twenty-four years, retired at the
end of the spring 2009 semester. For nearly
a quarter of a century she taught the Math
for Elementary Teachers sequence of
courses, the Explorations in College
Algebra, and a variety of lower-level mathe
atics courses. During the fall 1996 semester
– with the support of the Dean of the
College of Science and Technology – she
developed a Math Trail (a system of
podiums with a
mathematicsrelated problem at
each podium) on
the
Hattiesburg
campus.
Each
semester
since
then students in
the Math for
Elementary
Teachers classes
have developed questions and directed
elementary students from area schools as
they “solved” their way through the Math
Trail. She continued to work with service
learning activities in these classes with
Garden Projects and tutoring assignments.
Ms. McDowell led in the development of the
Explorations in College Algebra (MAT
101E) course with support in 1995 from an
Aubrey K. Lucas Endowment for Faculty
Excellence grant and in 2001 from a
Summer Grant for the Improvement of
Instruction. Oral and written student
explorations – basic features of this course –
provide collaborative opportunities for
students to learn concepts encountered in
algebra.
Two New Texts by Dr. Jiu Ding
In 2009 Dr. Jiu Ding published two new
texts in collaboration with Dr. Aihui Zhou at
the Institute of Computational Mathematics
and Scientific/Engineering Computing, a
part of the Chinese Academy of sciences.
Statistical Properties of Deterministic
Systems (ISBN – 10:3540853669 and ISBN
– 13:978-3540853664) is a graduate
textbook and contains much of Dr. Ding’s
research in computational ergodic theory. It
is published by Tsinghua University Press
and Springer-Verlag. Nonnegative Matrices,
Positive Operators, and Applications (ISBN
– 978-981-283-917-6 and ISBN –
981-283-917-8) is designed for upper level
undergraduate and beginning graduate
students. It is published by World Scientific.
One fascinating application of nonnegative
matrices included in the book is the socalled Google matrix first proposed by Brin
and Page, co-founders of Google.
Dr. Ding presented a plenary talk at an IEEE
International Workshop on Chaos and
Fractals sponsored by Hong Kong
City University in November 2008. He also
gave a seminar at his alma mater Nanjing
University and delivered a public speech on
American higher education to more than one
thousand students at another college. The
resulting article was published by the
Science Times, a national newspaper in
China.
Dr. John Perry’s Work on Faugere’s
F5 Algorithm
Dr. John Perry
recently presented
a talk on his
research on JeanCharles Faugere’s
F5 algorithm at the
SAGE Days 12
workshop. SAGE,
which stands for
“Software
for
Algebra and Geometry Exploration,” is a
computer algebra system assembled by
many of the world’s leading researchers.
Dr. Perry has co-authored a paper on F5
which was presented at the MEGA 2009
conference in Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Perry’s
colleague Christian Eder, a Ph.D. student at
the University of Kaiserslautern, made the
presentation. MEGA, which stands for
“Effective
Methods
in
Algebraic
Geometry,” is an international conference on
computational algebraic geometry.
International Scholarly Activities
In early December 2008, Dr. C.S. Chen was
invited to visit Dr. Wen Chen at Hohai
University in China where he presented a
seminar talk and actively worked with
researchers there for a period of ten days. He
then attended the Third International
Conference on Scientific Computing and
Partial Differential Equations in Hong Kong
in mid-December 2008. Subsequently he
visited a number of institutions in Taiwan
and presented a seminar talk at National
Taiwan Ocean and River University right
before Christmas. In March 2009, as a
member of an external Ph.D. Committee of
the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia,
Dr. Chen was invited to attend a Ph.D. oral
proposal presentation by Professor Bozidar
Sarler. On the same trip, Dr. Chen visited
Professor
Jurica
Soric
at
the
University
of Zagreb
in Croatia
and
presented
a seminar
talk
during his
visit.
In
mid-April,
Dr. Chen
was invited to give a seminar talk at the
University of West Florida. In early June
2009, Dr. Chen attended the Third
International Conference on Computational
Methods for Coupled Problems in Science
and Engineering (COUPLED 2009) in
Ischia Island, Italy. At the end of June Dr.
Chen presented a planetary talk in the
International Conference on Computational
Methods in Applied Sciences (CMAS 2009)
in Bratislava, Slovakia. Between these two
conferences Dr. Chen took a private
vacation and traveled extensively in Italy
before he visited Professor V. Kompish at
the Academy of Armed Forces in Slovakia
under the support of a NATO-RTO project
in nano-material and Professor Bozidar
Sarler in Slovenia under the support of a
Slovenia-USA
bilateral
grant
in
computational fluid dynamics.
Honors Student Participates in
Research Experience
Ms. Elisabeth Palchak, a mathematics
major in the Honors College, was
selected to attend an REU (Research
Experience for Undergraduates) at the
University of Georgia from June 8
through July 24 this past summer. This is
a prestigious award that provided a
stipend and covered her travel expenses.
The award enabled Ms. Palchak to work
in a team of students from all over the
country on graph cohomolgy.
2009 Summer Mathematics Institute
This is the first year Dr. Haiyan Tain
organized the 2009 USM Summer
Mathematics Institute after Dr. Myron
Henry retired last year.
The Summer
Institute is designed for in-service teachers
in Mississippi. Its primary goals is to
improve participating teachers’ content
knowledge in mathematics and their
technology proficiency through a twentyday summer session and two fall follow-up
sessions. Twenty-seven teachers from
Mississippi school districts mostly south of
I-20 were selected to participate. The
summer session was held from June 1 to
June 26, 2009. This is the sixth consecutive
summer institute hosted by the Department
of Mathematics.
USM to Host MCTM Conference
The University of Southern Mississippi and
the Department of Mathematics will host the
Mississippi Council of Teachers of
Mathematics Annual Conference October 8
– 9, 2009. The conference is being held in
conjunction with Texas Instruments’ T 3
Regional
Technology
Conference.
Presentations
in
mathematics,
science,
and
technology will be
available for K- 16
teachers. Co-chairs
for the conference
are
Ms. Mary
Peters
of
the
Department
of
Mathematics
at
USM and Mr. Jason Ross, Instructor in
Mathematics at Mississippi Gulf Coast
Community College, Perkinston Campus.
External Funding
In 2008, the total amount of external
funding the department received was
$387,051. We thank faculty members who
worked hard to attract the external funding.
Recent external funding includes:
• The 2009 USM Summer Mathematics
Institute was funded through the U.S.
Department of Education (No Child Left
Behind) and the Mississippi Institutions
of Higher Learning. PI: Haiyan Tian.
Co-PIs: Myron Henry and Sherry
Herron. The total award is $109,194 for
the grant period March 11, 2009 to April
30, 2010.
• We have been awarded an external
funding grant entitled “Course Redesign
Emporium Model for Intermediate
Algebra” by IHL in the amount of
$100,000 to support our Math Zone
operation. This project involves the
Dean of the College of Science ans
Technology, four faculty members, and
•
one technician. Dr. Barry Piazza and
Mrs. Janice Fletcher are the major PI
and co-PI responsible for the execution
of the project.
A three-year NATO-RTO project
entitled “Advanced Computational
Simulation of Composites Reinforced
by Short Fibrers” has been awarded to
Drs. C.S. Chen and Haiyan Tian to
collaborate in research on nano-material
with Professor Valdmir Kompish from
the Academy of Armed Forces in the
Republic of Slovakia. This is an
international collaborative grant which
will provide travel support between the
two research teams.
during April and May in 2009. The
collaboration has produced several key
papers with researchers in this
department. The visit has proved to be
fruitful.
Visiting Scholars
•
Ph.D. Students Exchange Activities
•
•
•
Under the financial support of a
European Union Research Project, Ms.
Guangming Yao, one of our Ph.D.
students, has the opportunity to work
with a research team at the University of
Nova Gorica in Slovenia in the area of
meshless methods for solving partial
differential equations. Ms. Yao will
spend the entire fall semester 2009 in
Europe. She is expected to return to
USM in spring 2010.
Ms.
Yanping Liu
came to visit
Dr. Jiu Ding
as a visiting
Ph.D.
student
sponsored
by China's
Oversea Study Foundation from August
2008 to February 2009. She received her
Ph.D. this summer from Donghua
University in Shanghai and found a job
at Zhejiang University of Oceans in
Zhoushan City, Zhejiang Province.
Mr. Ming Li, a Ph.D. student from City
University of Hong Kong, visited our
department to collaborate with the
research group of computational
mathematics in meshless methods
Dr. Tongsong Jiang is a visiting scholar
from Linyi Normal University in China.
During his sabbatical year (2009), Dr.
Jiang has chosen to come to visit Dr. Jiu
Ding. Dr. Jiang is the Vice-President of
his institution. During February – July
2009, Dr. Jiang spent the first part of his
sabbatical leave working with our
faculty members. In addition, he made
effort to contact the upper administrators
to establish the academic exchange
program between USM and his
institution. Dr. Jiang will return to USM
in mid-September and will continue to
collaborate with our research group in
computational mathematics during fall
2009. Under his arrangement, a
delegation of five faculty members led
by the President of his university will
come to visit USM to discuss and sign
the agreement of the exchange program
between the two institutions.
•
Dr. C. H. Tsai was a visiting assistant
professor in spring 2009. In addition to
teaching two classes, Dr. Tsai also
worked in the Math Zone. He was very
active in collaborating on research with
faculty members and helped graduate
students in computational mathematics.
•
•
Professor D.L. Young from the
Department of Civil Engineering at
National Taiwan University visited us
for one week in August 2008.
Dr. Roger Bidaux, visited the
department in October and November
of 2008 to collaborate with Dr. Joseph
Kolibal,
continuing
the
collaboration from the previous year on
problems
associated
with
random walks and driven diffusion in
mathematical physics. Dr. Bidaux is
associated with Centre d'Etudes
Nucléaires de Saclay (CEA), France.
Congratulations to Dr. Gaston Smith
Dr. Gaston Smith, retired member of the
Department of Mathematics and now a
visiting professor at USM, received a pin in
recognition of his fifty years as a member of
the Mathematical Association of America
during August 2009. The pin was presented
at MathFest 2009 in Portland, Oregon. Dr.
Smith was unable to attend the ceremony
but expresses his appreciation for the
recognition.
Improvements on the Coast Campus
This semester a greatly expanded
math/science/technology lab has opened at
USM-Gulf Coast. The new facility is being
used both for tutoring and for class
meetings. With the assistance of two
students, one-on-one tutoring is being
provided in mathematics, physics, and
chemistry. The room – complete with
computers – is a welcomed addition to the
instructional program on our coast campus.
(The former lab space is now a storage
closet!)
USM Hosts High School Competition
On February 25, 2009 students from sixty
high schools in the southern part of the state
participated in the American Mathematics
Competition 10B and 12B on the campus of
USM. Dr. Haiyan Tian served as the contest
manager.
Mr. Chris Mills’ Thesis for Honors
College
In the spring 2009 semester Mr. Chris Mills
defended his thesis in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for graduation from the
Honors College. The thesis, prepared under
the supervision of Dr. Haiyan Tian, is titled
“Method of Approximate Solutions for Illposed Elliptic Boundary Value Problems.”
Following graduation from USM, Mr. Mills
began graduate studies at Florida State
University.
Math Tutoring Center
Mrs. Susan Howell
took the initiative in
establishing a math
tutoring center in
fall 2008. The center
is open from 1:00 to
5:00 p.m., Monday
through Thursday.
Two
graduate
students
are
available for free
tutoring during these
hours.
Distinguished Alumni Support
Over the years, Mr. and Mrs. Jim and Mary
Sue Angelo, our distinguished alumni, have
continuously made donations to the
Department of Mathematics. Such donations
allow the department to support a series of
scholarly activities. In summer 2008 the
department used the funds donated by the
couple to enable graduate student Andreas
Grunewald to work full time to complete his
Master thesis. As a result, Mr. Grunewald
was able to focus on his research and
completed his thesis on time. Part of their
donation was used to support faculty
attending conference. We greatly appreciate
their kind support over the past many years.
Our 2008/2009 Graduates
Bachelor of Science Degrees:
Shaina Barber, Michael Battise, Erika
Castellanos, Steven Fortenberry, Timothy
Garvey, Jaimie Gollott, Deanna Leggett,
Christopher Mills, Ashley Petrinec, Ashley
Sanders, Whitney Thomas, Wendy Behrens,
Rasheeda Crawford, Courtney Davies,
Elizabeth Hillman, Regina Long, Katie
Powell, Mary Salisbury, George Davis,
Lindsey Kelley
Master of Science Degrees:
Erin Westmoreland, John Cleveland, Corwin
Stanford, Andreas Grunewald, Koshal Dahal
2008-2009 Scholarship Recipients
•
•
•
•
•
•
Benjamin Benson
Alton C. Grimes ($729.93)
Rachel Blailock
Wright W. Cross ($500)
Deanna Leggett
Virginia Felder ($1606.03)
Fred H. and Nadyne M. Drews
($868.15)
Chris Mills
Fred H. and Nadyne M. Drews ($1000)
Elisabeth Palchak
Wright W. Cross ($1363.90)
Jack D. Munn Memorial ($564.46)
Whitney Thomas
Wright W. Cross ($1928.36)