Math majors and faculty present at national MathFest conference

Three students and two faculty members presented at MathFest 2014, the national conference of the Mathematical Association of America, in Portland, Oregon, on August 6-9, 2014.

Nakhila Mistry '14
Nakhila Mistry ’14[/caption]Robin French ’15, Nakhila Mistry ’14 and Nicole Soltz ’17 joined two faculty members – professor of mathematics Jeff Clark and assistant professor of mathematics Chad Awtrey – to present at MathFest 2014 in Portland, Oregon.

French and Soltz spoke on work related to their respective 2014 SURE projects, both mentored by Awtrey. Each of them plans to submit their results for publication and continue working on new projects this coming academic year.

Mistry’s research was mentored by professor of mathematics Todd Lee. Having graduated in May, Mistry is traveling to Sri Lanka in the fall on a Fulbright award where she will teach English literature.

Clark presented in the session “Open and Accessible Problems in Real or Complex Analysis.” His talk focused on undergraduate research problems rooted in the foundational material that students learn in calculus.

Robin French '15
Robin French ’15[/caption]Awtrey spoke in the session “Undergraduate Research in Mathematics: How, When, Why.” He detailed several aspects of his undergraduate research program, including goal setting, securing funding and his students’ research outcomes.

Also in attendance at the conference was visiting assistant professor of mathematics Kristen Mazur. Mazur participated in intensive professional development workshops that were sponsored by Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching), a national program of the Mathematical Association of America dedicated to training recent mathematics Ph.D. recipients for careers as teacher-scholar-mentors.  

Nicole Soltz '17
Nicole Soltz ’17[/caption]In June, Mazur was chosen as a 2014-2015 Project NExT fellow, gaining partial travel support to attend workshops at three national conferences.  Mazur joins five other members in the department of mathematics and statistics who have been chosen as Project NExT fellows.

The titles of the presentations are as follows:

French: “A new algorithm for Galois groups of quintic polynomials”

Mistry: “A Modified Random Walker Ranking System for NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Teams”

Soltz: “Counting roots and Galois groups”

Clark: “A Topology of Subdivision for the Real Numbers”

Awtrey: “One approach to undergraduate research in computational Galois theory”