MATHLETTER
SUMMER 2004

Chair's Corner
This coming year will be my last as chair. I am not leaving the department for good. I do hope to teach for a couple of years after leaving this office. As I reflect on the events of this past academic year, certain things stand out. Jan Davis and Mylan Redfern announced their retirements. Benefactor Wright W. Cross was named our college's Outstanding Alumni. The faculty voted no confidence in the president. The campus turmoil may have complicated our search for an assistant professor, and we failed to hire this year. This was despite having 125 applicants and interviewing four candidates on campus. Last, we have a new dean of our college, Rex Gandy. This was his first year at Southern Miss. His expectation for mathematics is that we continue to train teachers and begin to build a computational program. In the coming year, the department will be searching for a new chair and for one to two new professors.

President's List
Summer 2003: Jenny Boston, JaRhonda Cameron, Andrea Weimer
Fall 2003: Andrew Balasa, Amanda Mixon, Nhiem Nguyen, Melissa Overby, Nora Rapetti, Kathryn Robinson, Matthew Stogner
Spring 2004: Lee Blackburn, Jenny Boston, Robert Bouis, Jessica Evans, Melody Hicks, Kathryn Robinson, Matthew Stohner, Mamorou Uehira

Dean's List
Summer 2003: Trisha Simpson, Chunrong Zhang
Fall 2003: Lee Blackburn, Jenny Boston, Robert Bouis, Emily Bowman, Maranda Burks, Jessica Burt, Deana Crane, Michael Granberry, Melody Hicks, Jenesa Nelson, Bethany Newman, Welman Pippin, Theresa Plumberg, Berkley Rosonet, Mathew Shaw, Ashley Smith, Amanda Stricklin, Keith Ziegler
Spring 2004: Jessica Burt, Racheal Cooley, Megan Lanham, Tiffany Lee, Lenton McLendon, Bethany Newman, Katie Randolph, Shana Simmons, Nora Rapetti, Berkley Rosonet

Scholarships
The departmental scholarship committee met on April 27 and made its recommendations for scholarship awards for academic year 2004-2005. The biographies of the recipients follow.

Wright W. Cross Endowment
Nicholas Brewer ($300) will be transferring to the Hattiesburg campus from the Gulf Coast this fall and will be a junior. He will be a mathematics major with licensure. Nicholas was a recipient of the William Winter Scholarship and is a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.
Alisha Renea Gibson ($100) is a mathematics with licensure major and will be a junior next year. Alisha is an enthusiastic class participant who has a talent for doing and explaining mathematics.
Amanda Meadows ($300) is a double major in mathematics and computer science and will be a senior next year. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Mu Epsilon and the University Singers. Amanda has a 4.0 average. Bethany Newman ($300) is a mathematics major with licensure and will be a senior next year. Bethany has done much volunteer work. She is a member of Phi Theta Kappa and the Baptist Student Union. She was the recipient of the College of Science and Technology Outstanding Junior Award for 2003-2004.
Kathryn Robinson ($1,300) is a senior mathematics major with licensure. She has been both a National Dean's List Scholar and a College of Science and Technology Scholar. Kathryn is also writing an honors thesis.

Virginia Felder Endowment
Bethany Newman ($1,000). A brief bio appears above.

Alton C. Grimes Endowment
Amanda Meadows ($500). A brief bio appears above.

NASA Space Grant
Jessica Burt ($1,000) is a math major minoring in both computer science and English and will be a senior during 2003-2004. Jessica is a member of Kappa Mu Epsilon, and she received the KME Freshman Math Award.
Alisha Renea Gibson ($200). A brief bio appears above.

Wright W. Cross – Outstanding Alumnus
Wright W. Cross received the first College of Science and Technology Outstanding Alumni Award. He was presented a plaque at an award luncheon at Maison Lacour in Baton Rouge on Thursday, May 27, by Dean Rex Gandy. The luncheon was hosted by daughter Courtland and was attended by approximately twenty guests who were some of Mr. Cross' closest friends and relatives. The award was particularly significant because it is the first, and all graduates of the college were eligible to receive it. Yet Mr. Cross was unanimously selected by the college's award committee. The first endowed chair at The University of Southern Mississippi was created by Wright and Annie Rea Cross of Baker, Louisiana . This happened in 1997 when Mr. Cross, a 1951 mathematics graduate of Southern Miss, and his wife set up a Charitable Remainder Unitrust gift of $2.15 million to form the Cross Chair in Mathematics and Endowment for Undergraduate Research. The Crosses shortly thereafter added a further $1.1 million to the trust, bringing the total amount to over $3.3 million. Interest from the gift will provide salary and research expenses for the endowed chair and for at least ten Cross Scholars in mathematics. In 1994, the Crosses gave $50,000 to mathematics to establish a large scholarship endowment. Students who received these awards were instrumental in helping the university obtain the subsequent 1997 gift. Letters of thanks from students to the Crosses for their generosity led the Crosses to do more through his trust gift. Mr. Cross said that he wanted to make a difference in the lives of mathematics students at Southern Miss.

Teaching Award
Jiu Ding was selected by the University Awards Committee to receive the Excellence in Teaching award for 2004. Professor Ding was honored with a presidential Congratulations Luncheon on Tuesday, April 27. Moreover, he received an honorarium of $1,000. The award recognizes faculty members with records of exceptional teaching and reflects the respect accorded to the honorees by their colleagues.

Retirements
The department lost two veteran faculty members to retirement. Instructor B. Jan Davis is taking phased retirement. Jan joined the department in 1971. She has spent 33 years at Southern Miss and garnered a well-deserved reputation as an outstanding classroom instructor who has the ability to explain difficult concepts and make them less difficult for the students. In recent years Mrs. Davis taught the large-section introductory mathematics classes. Fortunately for us, she has agreed to come back next spring and teach two large sections. Professor Mylan E. Redfern has retired and begun a new career. She has accepted the position of chair of the combined department of mathematics and computer science at Valdosta State University in Georgia . Dr. Redfern came to us in 1978 as an instructor. She took a two-year developmental leave starting in 1984 to work on her Ph.D. at LSU, which she earned in 1988. Dr. Redfern has a reputation as an excellent teacher. She established herself as a scholar in stochastic analysis, was one of the few in this department with success in obtaining external funding, and gave unstinting service to this department, especially in committee work such as the Scholarship Committee.

Summer Math Institute
Myron Henry, mathematics professor, and Ron Styron, assistant professor of educational leadership and research, were funded again during summer 2004 for the mathematics summer institute. The award was approximately $89K. The general focus of the institute is on building understanding of mathematics concepts at sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade levels through the extensive use of technology (PCs and graphing calculators). The institute was housed once again at the Family Education Center in downtown Hattiesburg .

Creative Gardening
Elementary education teaching majors at Southern Miss are learning how to teach math in a different way, through gardening. Instructors Lida McDowell and Mary Peters are implementing “measuring” into the curriculum. They demonstrate measuring to elementary school children through maintaining gardens at Jones and Aldersgate elementary schools. Southern Miss elementary education students have the opportunity to work hands-on with the children in the garden, which is funded through the Light House Garden Project.

Busy Time
The coming year will prove to be a busy one. There will be a search for one to two assistant professors. The goal is to hire at least one computational mathematician who can contribute to the applied master's program and computational science doctoral program. Both programs are presently being developed. The computational science degree replaces the old multidisciplinary scientific computing degree. The whole department is gearing up to search for a new chair. The principal requirement here is excellence in administration. In addition, the department plays host to the Louisiana-Mississippi section of the Mathematical Association of America. This is because Wally Pye is its chair. The plan is to hold the meeting at the Grand Casino–Gulfport during March 3-5. Average attendance at this annual event is 250-300 participants, which includes as many as 120 students. We are hoping that the Coast location will encourage a record number of participants.

New and Visiting Faculty
Dr. Julie Cwikla has joined the department on the Coast. She was formerly housed in Curriculum and Instruction, but she wanted to be part of mathematics. Professor Cwikla earned a B.S. in mathematics and chemistry from Fairfield University in Connecticut , an M.S. in applied mathematics at the Courant Institute in New York City , and a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the University of Delaware . She has been an assistant professor at Southern Miss since June 2001. Dr. Cwikla is the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation CAREER grant. This prestigious grant covers the period from 2003 to 2008 and is the first grant of its type at Southern Miss. There also will be four visitors on the main campus to help with teaching during 2004-2005. Jessica Bunch, M.S. in mathematics, and Kelly Tucker, M.S. in curriculum and instruction, are first-time visitors. Jessica graduated from our master's program and returns to us after one year's teaching at Waynesboro High. Kelly will complete her master's in curriculum and instruction with a heavy math emphasis this August. Yosi Balas, who has been teaching for us since 1997, and Dr. Gaston Smith, who has taught for us since 1993 shortly after his retirement from William Carey, will both return for another year.

Alum News
Thomas Hartfield (B.S., 1997; M.S., 2001) was promoted to assistant professor of mathematics at Gainesville College, Gainesville,Ga. Kathleen Williams (B.S., 1976) is a Colmer middle school teacher. She was honored in November with the Pascagoula School District 's Teacher of the Year Award. Justin Shows (B.S., 2002) will graduate in August from Mississippi State with an M.S. in statistics. He will begin working toward a Ph.D. in statistics at North Carolina State this fall. Craig Collier (B.S., 1998) has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography in La Jolla , Calif. He began the position in August. Dr. Kim Drews (B.S., 1993; M.S., 1995) is doing a two-year postdoctoral training program in bioinformatics at Texas A&M. John M. Graves (B.S., 1982; M.S., 1984) is a manager for the Engineering Process Group, Intelligence and Information Systems at Raytheon in Richardson, Texas. Ken Johnston (B.S., 1975) is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and is at Farm Bureau in Jackson, Miss.