This is an important year for self-refl ection as the department continues to

deal with ongoing budget cuts. We have had to look at all programs with a careful eye and focus on our strengths as a hub for both research and education. In doing this, the department has a distinct advantage in that mathematics plays an increasingly important role across disciplines.

The popularity of mathematics as an undergraduate major continues to grow as students recognize the importance of math as a foundation to many areas of science, business and medicine. With more than 6,000 living alumni around the world, math is the largest cohort of alumni in the College of Natural Science and we continue to be a popular major.

A new development in the department is the advanced track of courses we have started for those students seeking a greater challenge in their core classes. Our intent

From the Department Chair...

is to serve a set of students who excel best when challenged with increasingly diffi cult problems. We started with a trial set of courses this past year and received high marks from the students and faculty involved. This is proving to be a great way to involve many dual major students who enjoy math, yet have their eyes on a career in another area of science. This is quickly becoming a great recruiting tool and the faculty involved are thrilled by the level of participation.

Another area of growth and focus is actuarial science. With the guidance of our alumni and faculty, we have developed a specialization in actuarial science and are closer to launching a degree. The support from alumni, students and university

NEWSLETTER FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS SUMMER 2010

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

administration has been terrifi c and we hope to have the next phase completed in 2011.

In the past 10 years, MSU’s research expenditures from federal grants have increased 58%, to $400 million this past year. All the while, state support has dwindled to less than 32% of the total MSU budget. This means grants and philanthropy are rapidly replacing state funding that supports academic and research programs. Our faculty continue to be competitive in pursuing grants and conducting world-leading research. Nevertheless, recruiting and retaining our best students and faculty in the face of ever decreasing state funding requires resources that must now be obtained from other sources.

Personal philanthropy in the form of scholarships to aid students is something we hope alumni will consider. It allows the department to recruit and retain excellent students while providing resources to ensure our programs remain strong. The next few years will be a period of signifi cant change for MSU as it refocuses on its core missions and invests in those areas most important to the future of the institution. We feel the department is well-positioned to play a central role in the future of MSU. I hope you will read some of the articles in this newsletter and share my confi dence in the future.

Yang Wang, Ph.D.ChairDepartment of MathematicsMichigan State University

Yang Wang

2Department of Mathematics

Francis (Frank) Moss, ’54, is retired and living in Mid-Michigan.

William Harkness, ’55, M.A. ’56, Ph.D. ’59, received the 2010 C.I. Noll Award as the Outstanding Teacher in the Eberly College of Science at Pennsylvania State University. Harkness joined Penn State in 1959, retired in 2002, and continued teaching as a volunteer until this year.

Neil Larks, ’59, is enjoying retirement and serving as a volunteer at Rancho Los Cerritos, a historic site in Long Beach, California. In 2008, he was honored with the prestigious Sarah Bixby Award, presented to volunteers with at least 10 years of active membership, a minimum of 750 volunteer hours and years of serving on its board.

Stanly Steinberg, ’62, M.A. ’63, is a co-principle investigator of the recently-funded Center for the Spatiotemporal Modeling of Cell Signaling at the University of New Mexico. The center promotes institutional development of multidisciplinary research, training, and outreach programs that focus on systems-level studies of biomedical phenomena.

Jeff Hack, ’63, attained the rank of Silver Life Master at the game of Bridge.

Thomas Steinfatt, ’63, a professor of communication studies at the University of Miami since 1987, is involved in quantitative research for the U.S. Department of State and the United Nations on human traffi cking in southeast Asia. He also continues teaching statistical methods to undergrads, master’s students, and

doctoral students. In 2003 and 2004, he was a Fulbright Scholar attached to the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia and taught advanced seminars in statistical methods to the faculty and graduate students at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

Jeffrey Yankowitz, ’64, retired from the Boeing Company. He spent most of his 29 years in sales and marketing and served as Sales and Marketing Vice President of Boeing’s Aircraft Trading.

Eugene Hubert, ’65, is retired and living in Thailand.

Harmon Brown, M.S. ’66, is Professor Emeritus at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. He retired in 2007 after 33 years of teaching mathematics.

Paul Davis, M.A. ’68, retired from Northrop Grumman in 2009 after 41 years in the aerospace industry. He is currently an instructor in project management and systems engineering for the California Institute of Technology’s Center for Technology and Management Education.

Robert Rietz, ’70, retired from Deloitte Consulting in May 2010 where he was the Chief Pension Actuary. He is serving his second year on the Actuarial Board for Counseling and Discipline, which serves as the investigatory and counseling body for the actuarial profession in the U.S.

Roger Gale, ’71, just completed his 39th year of teaching high school mathematics.

John Molohon, ’71, recently retired from a career in the state of Washington’s K-12

education system where he was Assistant Superintendent for Fiscal Services and assisted school districts with their fi nances and state reporting. He also served as a liaison to the Offi ce of State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Charles Sharp, ’73, spent 20 years teaching secondary education mathematics, and is a graphic designer for his company Sharp Des!gns.

Kevin Karplus, ’74, is a professor of computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This year, he taught a class titled “Banana Slug Genomics”, which involved trying to sequence the genome of the campus mascot. All the student work and lecture notes for the class are on a wiki: banana-slug.soe.ucsc.edu.

Linda Deneen, M.A. ’75, Ph.D. ’80, has served as the Director of Information Technology at the University of Minnesota Duluth for 18 years and recently began a series of articles about student engagement for the EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

Michael Shelly, ’75, retired from teaching at Andover High School in Bloomfi eld Hills, Mich., and is now teaching mathematics and mathematics education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn where he has served as a part-time lecturer since 1987.

Stuart Kurtz, ’78, received a 2009 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago. He notes that the teacher who most inspired him was MSU professor Ed Ingraham.

(Continued on Page 3)

3Michigan State University

Victor Middleton, M.S. Applied Mathematics ’78, is completing a Ph.D. in engineering at Wright State University. His dissertation is on Imperfect Situation Awareness: Representing the Role of Error and Uncertainty in Modeling, Simulation & Analysis of Small Unit Military Operations.

Jean Amato Gavin, M.A.T. ’79, recently began to do private professional math tutoring in the Wilmington, Delaware, area and was named “Best Private Practice Tutor” in 2008 by the National Tutoring Association.

David Paddock, ’79, has been promoted to Scientifi c Advisor – Seismic Reservoir Characterization at Schlumberger Technology Corporation in Houston, Texas.

Mark Ten Brink, ’81, recently joined Oakland University and is teaching the M.B.A. statistics class.

Megan Lebacque-Khoshyaran, ’84, M.S. Applied Mathematics ’86, is a researcher at LVMT (a research laboratory addressing the city and transportation) and concurrently a researcher at CEREA in Paris, France. Her research fi eld is transportation modeling and air quality modeling, specifi cally mobile source pollutant emissions, and is working on a joint project between LVMT and CEREA.

Aaron Cinzori, ’90, M.S. ’93, Ph.D. ’98, was named chair of the Mathematics Department at Hope College in July 2010.

Alumni Class Notes (Continued)

Professor Bruce Sagan will be returning to MSU this fall after serving three years as a Program Offi cer at the NSF administering grants in combinatorics. Sagan will also be a keynote speaker at the British Combinatorial Conference in 2011. The topic for his keynote address is the Cyclic Sieving Phenomenon, a recently discovered connection between combinatorics and representation theory.

Associate Professor Rajesh Kulkarni and Assistant Professor Ignacio Uriarte-Tuero received the department’s J.S. Frame Teaching Excellence Award this year. The award is presented annually for excellent teaching in the department and honors J.S. Frame, who was an MSU professor from 1943 to 1977 and served as chair from 1943 to 1960.

Matthew Hedden joined the faculty last fall as an Assistant Professor and recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation on “Knots and surfaces in three- and four-manifolds: Applications of symplectic topology and quantum algebra to low dimensional topology.” Hedden’s research focuses on Floer homology theories for low-dimensional objects. He was on leave during the spring of 2010 while participating in MSRI’s program “Homology theories of knots and links”.

In June, Professor Guowei Wei presented a series of lectures at the Korea National Institute of Mathematical Sciences on stochastic/multiscale methods and their application in June. He will also present a keynote lecture at the Second International African Conference on Computational Mechanics in January 2011. Wei is organizing a Mathematical Biosciences Institute workshop on modeling and computation of biomolecular structure and dynamics to be held April 25-29, 2011.

Mathematics Faculty News

Greg Buzzard, M.S. ’91, was promoted to full professor in the Dept. of Mathematics

at Purdue University.

Matthew Fukuzawa, ’05, graduated from the U.S.

Army Ranger School in October 2009. He is currently stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and has assumed command of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry. He is scheduled to deploy soon to Afghanistan.

Nicholas Moose, ’06, M.A. Industrial Mathematics ’10, has been hired as a mathematician at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia.

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4Department of Mathematics

As a junior at Michigan State University, Ron Simon (B.S. ’67) landed a

part-time job sorting key punch cards at an insurance company in Lansing. His intent was to earn money for college. Yet the keypunch cards held more than the data for automobile and homeowners policies. For Simon, the cards held the opportunity to lead a Fortune 500 company and one of country’s leading insurers: Auto-Owners Insurance.

Simon’s 44 years with Auto-Owners culminated in his being named President in 2005. He then was named CEO in 2008. Leading the company, where he spent his entire career, built upon opportunity and discipline – lessons he traces back to his time at MSU, was beyond his dreams.

“For 23 years I worked in the IT department where logic and mental discipline played a critical role in decision-making,” says Simon. “Assimilating large amounts of information and making decisions requires discipline and logic as you carefully develop successful systems.”

As Simon’s career led him into actuarial science, management and the board room, these skills, rooted in multiple logic and mathematics classes while earning his degree, proved to be instrumental in his success.

He credits these skills for helping him lead the toughest challenge of his career:

the fi nancial crisis which began in the fall of 2008. The mental discipline helped him develop a system for working through the problem while learning from it.

“The worst thing we can do is experience history and not learn from it,” says Simon. “We used 2008 and 2009 as a learning opportunity. We kept the fi nancial house secure so there was never a concern about our ability to pay claims or any other obligation, and we also developed a strategy to work through this should it occur again.”

Applying logic and discipline, combined with a focus on encouraging growth and learning, is Simon’s recipe for continued success.

“The greatest reward for me is to help others grow,” says Simon. He has mastered this within Auto-Owners and similarly with his alma mater. Simon and his wife of 44 years, Mary, provide funding for student scholarships in mathematics, and he also provides guidance to the Department of Mathematics and serves on the Dean’s Board of Advisors for the College of Natural Science.

“Solving diffi cult problems and building a stronger society will only happen if we all use our talents

and knowledge to help others achieve greater success,” says Simon. “Sharing and giving back is a necessity if we are to continue to advance both businesses and our lives.”

What started as a part-time job will end this summer for Simon when he turns 65, the compulsory retirement age for offi cers. While he may be offi cially retired, Simon’s sense of giving back will continue to help the next generation of MSU students who will be tomorrow’s CEOs.

After a Part-Time Job Launched His 44-Year Career, Retiring CEO Looks To Help Others Succeed

Ronald Simon, FLMI, is Chairman and CEO of Auto-Owners Insurance.

5Michigan State University

Scanning the list of names on her clipboard, Professor Jeanne Wald and a team of

math advisors greeted hundreds of incoming freshmen students this summer during the Academic Orientation Program and zeroed in on high performing, mathematically talented students.

The freshmen Wald was recruiting typically scored at least in the 97th percentile on the math portion of the ACT and excelled at high school calculus. From that group, Wald was seeking students who enjoy the thrill of being challenged.

Wald is recruiting students for several new advanced track math courses at MSU. These courses are special sections of existing classes, however, they are designed specifi cally for mathematically talented students who seek a challenge. Calculus, linear algebra and differential equations are three of the classes offered this coming year with the advanced track option.

The advanced track course sequence is fl exible so students with varying levels of high school math can enter. Wald says one of the principles behind the courses is to have a cohort of students who are at equally high abilities and seek out the challenge of more diffi cult problems.

“If you put students together who are excited to be challenged and they get together to help each other, you get a stimulating environment full of energy,” said Wald. “These students build a strong cohort and enjoy the challenge and learning that accompanies it.”

As an incentive to students seeking the advanced track courses, the department is offering scholarships and special job opportunities. Several advanced track students will work in the Math Learning Center or as teaching aides, so they can earn money while honing their skills and helping others.

Wald was hoping to have at least 15 students enrolled in the advanced track linear algebra course this fall. As of early July, more than 30 students were enrolled. Now the department will likely offer two advanced track sections. The department is also working to make this an offi cial option accompanying the mathematics major, and a proposal is currently in academic governance.

Beginning this fall, a one-credit seminar course “Mathematics Snapshots” has also been added. The seminar aims at generating interest and excitement about mathematics by exposing students to the beauty of math as well as the broad spectrum of its ideas and applications. Led by department chair Yang Wang, it will include guest lectures on selected topics and will focus on important ideas without indulging in technical details. The seminar is designed for students who enjoy math and look to explore career options in a range of fi elds.

“Students emerging from the advanced track program will be prepared quantitatively to go anywhere,” said Wald. “They are prepared for graduate school, professional school or the most challenging positions.” For Wald, talking with incoming freshmen who enjoy being challenged in math is an exciting way to spend the summer.

Advanced Sections Engage Students Who Crave Challenge

The department’s Michigan Center for Industrial and

Applied Mathematics hosted a 2-day workshop in April to expose businesses to skills that applied mathematics can use on multiscale problems. This was the third such workshop and the focus was on inverse problems. Professor Gang Bao served as workshop chair and organized the 18 presenters. The workshop brought together researchers in various fi elds that involve analysis and computation of inverse problems.

The department also hosted the Insti-tute for Mathematics and its Ap-plications (IMA) Summer Graduate Program in June. The 3-week program concentrated on Computational Wave Propagation. The IMA, established by the NSF in 1982 and located at the University of Minnesota, fosters research linking mathematics and sci-entifi c and technological problems.

New for 2010, the department was involved in a 7-week summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in Discrete Mathematics and Probability. Students from across the country came to MSU and were introduced to new mathematical topics and gained research experience on these topics. The students conducted research in three areas: pursuit and evasion games on graphs, computer assisted proofs of combinatorial identities, and random walks on fractals. The students will present their research in August at MathFest, the annual mathematics conference sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America. The program was funded by the National Security Agency and led by professors Robert Bell, Daniel Dougherty, and Aklilu Zeleke.

Department Hosts Workshops and REU

competition - a long-standing tradition honoring MSU Professor Fritz Herzog who devoted signifi cant efforts to undergraduate education and helped successfully prepare students for the Putnam exam. MSU ranked fi rst in the Putnam competition in 1961, 1963 and 1967, and was fourth in 1960 and 1968.

For 2009, MSU had 23 students participate in the Herzog exam, including one from the MSU campus in Dubai, according to Uriarte-Tuero. He notes that the problems are generally easier than the Putnam, but the results are used to help MSU form the Putnam team.

“Besides the expected participation of math majors, we had quite a few participants from engineering, computer science, chemistry, and physics,” said Uriarte-Tuero. “Any undergraduate at MSU can participate and they understand that some questions may be beyond their level of knowledge. While basic calculus knowledge is needed, we try to have them rely on common sense and substantial ingenuity so that freshmen are only at a minor disadvantage with respect to seniors.”

The high scores for 2009 Herzog competition were from students Yeskendir Kassenov, Roy Dong, Victoria McCoy and Haokai Xi.

6Department of Mathematics

The fi rst Saturday in December continues to mark a special date

for mathematics students: the annual Putnam Competition. The competition challenges students from across the U.S. and Canada as they compete for cash prizes by trying to solve 12 problems that require extensive creativity and solid mathematical skills.

The exam is open to all students, yet each school predetermines a team of students whose scores will be combined for the institution’s score. For the 2009 exam, there were 546 participating institutions and the MSU team ranked 107th.

James Voss, a mathematics and computer science major from Dayton, Ohio, was the top scorer for MSU with 37.4 points. Students receive ten points for each correct solution and lesser amounts of points for solutions of varying completeness. Voss was ranked 197.5 out of the 4,036 participants. The other high scoring MSU students included Haokai Xi, Victoria McCoy and Roy Dong.

“The median score in the U.S. is below three points and is often zero,” said Assistant Professor Ignacio Uriarte-Tuero, faculty leader for the MSU team. “Only one third of all the students score at least the equivalent of one complete problem solved. Overall, we are happy with the results and expect our students to continue to excel.”

MSU students prepare for the Putnam by participating in weekly problem sessions and competing in the Herzog

Popularity and Scores Remain High for Annual Competitions

The Department of Mathematics newsletter is published annually by the College of Natural Science for alumni and friends. Copyright 2010 Michigan State University. MSU is an affi rmative-action, equal-opportunity employer. Send correspondence to: Dept. of Mathematics c/o CNS Advancement Offi ce 103 Natural Science Building East Lansing, MI 48824 (517) 353-9855 - natsci4u@msu.edu.Contributing writers: Yang Wang and Mike Steger. Photography: Gordon Shetler, Mike Steger, istock-photo.com, MSU University Relations, Auto-Own-ers Insurance, Victoria McCoy.

Looking to reminisce about your days as a student? Test your skills to see how well you do at solving the problem below.

The 2009 edition of the Department of Mathematics newsletter featured two puzzles. We heard from alumni around the world as they worked on various solutions. Congratulations to Lloyd Rawley (B.A. ‘82) who was the fi rst to reply with correct solu-tions. We have published last year’s puzzles and the solutions at http://bit.ly/mathpuzzle.

For this year’s puzzle, send your solutions to natsci4u@msu.edu. Good luck!

How Often Is New Year’s Day A Sunday? Randomly select a year, what is the probability that January 1 of that year is a Sunday? Is it 1/7? This question is made more complicated by the presence of leap years with 29 days in February. Recall that a year is a leap year if the year number is divis-ible by 4 but not 100, unless it is also divisible by 400.

Test Your Skills

7Michigan State University

Research and Learning Outside the Classroom Helps Earn Recent Alumnus an NSF Fellowship

Recent alumnus Victoria McCoy (B.S. Mathematics and Geology ’10) had

childhood dreams of a career digging up fossils. Her dream took a turn in high school when she was introduced to the joys of real analysis, yet after four years at MSU, she has set herself up for a career where all her dreams are quickly becoming a reality.

“As a kid, I got interested in fossils and dreamed of becoming a paleobiologist,” says McCoy. “That was what I wanted to do, but in high school I got interested in real analysis and loved it.”

When McCoy arrived at Michigan State in 2006, she pursued both passions as a dual major in mathematics and geological sciences. As a member of MSU’s Honors College, she had the fl exibility to adapt her schedule of courses, enabling her to focus on science and mathematics while taking some of the most-challenging classes.

“The fast-paced and involved courses were wonderful as the math faculty really had a passion for working with students who love the challenge,” says McCoy. This translated to an increased discipline and problem-solving skill set she was able to use outside of mathematics.

McCoy complemented her coursework with a full range of immersive experiences. She was involved in undergraduate research beginning with her fi rst semester on campus, and combined with her developing skill set, she continued to explore many research

areas while working on her bachelor’s degree, including a Mathematics of Origami Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and paleobiology research on scorpion taphonomy.

Her research project developed criteria for distinguishing fossil scorpion molts and carcasses, and helps fi ll a gap for paleobiogists studying fossilized scorpion. This research project had her working with faculty at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History and helped her establish the connections she will

be developing this fall at Yale University when she begins a 3-year National Science Foundation Fellowship. McCoy credits her early involvement as one way she was able to customize her education and benefi t from MSU’s resources. While the third-generation Spartan from Pittsburgh did consider other universities, the

benefi ts of customizing her college experience combined with a University Distinguished Fellowship helped make her decision to attend MSU easy and benefi cial.

“Allowing students to get involved early on and build their portfolio of experience is something I found unique to MSU and something that has really helped me out,” says McCoy.

During McCoy’s four years at MSU, she has earned dozens of honors and opportunities. In addition to publishing two peer-reviewed journal articles, she received a Goldwater Scholarship in 2009 and an NSF Fellowship this year. The paleobiology research earned her fi rst place at MSU’s Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum this spring.

McCoy’s relationships with mathematics faculty, geology faculty and other students are among her fondest memories of her time at MSU. The involvement outside the traditional classroom is where she says these relationships grow, whether it was working on research or attending a preparation session for the Putnam Competition.

“The Putnam preparation sessions were the most enjoyable,” says McCoy. “I got to meet good people while working on problems and working together to solve problems. It was a lot of fun.”

As McCoy begins her graduate studies and works toward her goal of becoming a college professor, she will continue to pursue her childhood dream of paleobiology while embracing the skills and enthusiasm she has received from mathematics.

Victoria McCoy presenting her poster on Scorpion Taphonomy at a Geological Society of America meeting in 2007.

College of Natural Science103 Natural Science BuildingEast Lansing, MI 48824-1115

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

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alumni success stories with mathematics students.

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for details.

New Faces in the Department of Mathematics

Teena Gerhardt recently joined the department as an Assistant Professor with interests in algebraic topology and algebraic K-theory. Originally from Wisconsin, Ger-hardt studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts In-stitute of Technology with Lars Hesselholt as her doctoral thesis advisor. She spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University before joining MSU.

Aaron Levin will be joining the department faculty this fall and has research interests in arithmetic and Diophantine geometry, Diophantine approximation, and Nevanlinna theory. Levin earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and held an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University. He also held postdoctoral fellowships at Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Centro De Giorgi in Pisa, Italy. He comes to MSU from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Math Scores High in Job Rankings

Mathematics continues to rank high in the annual CareerCast.com Jobs Rated report. Among the 200 professions in the 2010 report, actuary ranked as the best job for 2010 and mathematician ranked 6th. This is a change from 2009 when the report had mathematician in the top spot and actuary in second. Other math-related jobs in this year’s top ten include software engineer (2), computer systems analyst (3), statistician (8) and accoun-tant (9). The report determined the rank-ings based on critical aspects including environment, income, outlook, stress and physical demands. Roustabout and lum-berjack ranked as the worst jobs.