Chair's Letter

After six months as Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Lamar University, I thought that some reflection on my experience thus far might be profitable. Of course, the Department is not without its challenges. However, I see so much potential in the students and the faculty.

Fall, 2002 was dominated by creating the Academic Master Plan (AMP) for the Department and initiating a search for new faculty member. The former was finished in good order with every member of the faculty contributing. However, AMP moved up to the College level where debate continued and then onto the University level. That process is continuing.

This spring, we were able to finish the faculty search with the hiring of Jennifer Fowler who will finish her doctorate at North Carolina State University, May, 2003. Her thesis concentrated in the areas of symmetric spaces, Lie algebras, and Lie groups with focus on writing algorithms to compute the structure of local symmetric spaces. She has experience with long distance learning and is interested in developing a program to encourage young women to pursue mathematics. She will be a valuable addition to our faculty. Considering the budget cuts here at Lamar, we are very fortunate to fill this position.

There are many things to mention here but I will hold my final comments to the undergraduate program and discuss other matters in a future newsletter. I am impressed by the mathematics majors I have met. However, we just need more of them. There is no "silver bullet" to recruiting great majors. Problem solving involving human beings is highly complex. But, there is much we can do. The Curriculum Committee is looking into ways to streamline both the BA and the BS. They would like to give more options and design degrees that better meet the needs and expectations of our majors. I welcome any ideas to improve our mathematics major and to make our program more attractive.

All in all, it has been a very good year.

Graduating Seniors

We are very proud of a great group of seniors. The following expect to graduate in May 2003 or August 2003. This group includes Widad Abedelwahab, Amanda Arnold, Natasha Digges Holden, Joshua Fuller, Phillip Guidry, Elizabeth Gunter, Crystal Haley, Pam Hudnall, and Jason James.

Pi Mu Epsilon

Our report this semester comes from Pi Mu Epsilon President Mandy Arnold. The chapter has been very busy and has recently regained recognition as an official Lamar student organization. Projects that Pi Mu Epsilon is presently working on include:

1. free tutoring program for TAL students,
2. planning for a lecture series in April,
3. planning on attending the Texas Section meeting in April, and
4. open problems from the College Mathematics Journal and the MAA Monthly
5. participation in Springfest in March, and
6. setting up a webpage on the departmental website.

As always, the chapter is actively seeking new members.

Officers are:
Mandy Arnold - President
Carl Price - Vice-president
Clint Jones - Treasurer
Joseph Young - Secretary.

New Mathematics Education Requirements, Take 2

As reported in Vol. 1, No. 1, the Departments of Professional Pedagogy, Sciences, and Mathematics teamed to revise all undergraduate degree programs for EC-8 teachers. All of the new programs have been approved. Students on the old degree plans must complete ExCET testing this summer. Beginning this fall, the new TExES will test State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) Standards. New mathematics courses developed for the new programs are being phased in. In addition to creating new courses, the process has involved correlating all course work for preprofessional teachers with the SBEC Standards. Drs. Baker and Wilkinson reported on the correlation process for the Mathematics Department during the College of Education retreat, which was attended by all university departments involved in educating future teachers. Drs. Baker and Wilkinson have also attended recent conferences devoted to teaching elementary and secondary mathematics and preprofessional mathematics/science teachers.

Students enrolled in the new pedagogy course, Mathematics/Science Methods for Elementary School Teachers, devote more than 50% of course hours to internships in local classrooms. During the Fall, 2002, Term, Dr. Wilkinson visited with EC-8 interns and their mentor teachers in the Beaumont, Port Arthur, West Orange, Vidor, Nederland, Port Neches, Lumberton, and Evadale school districts. Students in all field based pedagogy courses get to try on their teacher shoes; mathematics/science interns are actively involved in classrooms - they tutor children, interview professional educators, develop and teach inquiry based lessons to children, attend parent conferences, and assist mentor teachers with the many other teacher tasks.

Mathematics Contests

The Department will hold the Homer Dennis Freshman Mathematics Contest on April 7-8, 2003. The contest covers material from a broad range of the freshman mathematics curriculum; this year's emphasis will be on calculus.

Lamar MathFest! 2003 will be held on April 17, 2003. We are expecting approximately 200 local high school students and their faculty advisors from ten area high schools. The Department is grateful to Entergy Texas and to the University for continuing to support this effort.

Recent Papers and Presentations of Faculty and Students

Joseph A. Cima and Alec Matheson, Weakly compact composition operators on VMOA, Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics, 32, no. 3, Fall 2002, 937-951.

Alec Matheson, Isometries into function algebras, to appear in Houston Journal of Mathematics.

Joseph A. Cima, Alec Matheson, and William T. Ross, The backward shift on the space of Cauchy transforms, to appear in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society.

Valentin Andreev and Alec Matheson, Some quadratic extremal problems on the Dirichlet space, to appear in Complex Variables.

Joseph A. Cima and Alec Matheson, Compact embeddings of star-invariant subspaces, submitted.

Alec Matheson, Colloquium lecture: Extremal problems on Dirichlet spaces, SUNY Albany, November, 2002

P. Chiou, "Confidence bounds of scale parameters using pilot samples" accepted for publication in Journal of Statistical Research

D. Daniel, J. Nikiel, B. Treybig, M. Tuncali, and E. D. Tymchatyn, "Concerning Continua containing no Metric Subcontinua," accepted for publication in Houston Journal of Mathematics

D. Daniel and C. T. Kennaugh, "Concerning Metrizable Continua of Convergence," accepted for publication in Topology Proceedings

W. Ted Mahavier, A Model for Engaging Students in a Research Experience Involving Variational Techniques, Mathematica, and Descent Methods, PRIMUS, VOl. XII, Number 4, Dec. 2002, pp 365-383.

W. Ted Mahavier, Organizer and Moderator for Panel Session at Joint Meetings of AMS/MAA 2003, "Successful Strategies for Implementing A Moore-Method Class"

W. Ted Mahavier, Invited Address on the Moore-Method - Legacy of R. L. Moore Conference March 13-15, 2003.

Professional Appointments

Dr. Paul Chiou has been named Chief Editor for Journal of Probability and Statistical Science. Congratulations to Dr. Chiou!

Mathnerds!

The Department's ongoing affiliation with Mathnerds has garnered a great deal of publicity for the Department. Recent articles about Mathnerds have appeared in Fall 2002 Cardinal Cadence, February 2002 FOCUS, a recent edition of the New York Times, and the Spring Issue of University of North Texas Alumni News.

Funding

Congratulations to Dr. Ted Mahavier who received a Lamar University Research Enhancement Grant (REG) to prepare a proposal to the National Science Foundation for creation of a Digital Library at LU. The library would have as its base an on-line journal of discovery-based learning materials in mathematics.

Problem Section

The integer N=2⁵ 3⁴ 5⁶ is divisible by many perfect squares. Determine the total number of perfect squares by which N is divisible.

If four points are chosen randomly from the grid below, what is the probability that the four points will be the vertices of a square?