2017 Graduates and Awards
This academic year we had three graduates, Benjamin Malander, Ashlynn Kay and Martha Curbow. Benjamin Malander was recognized as being this year's Outstanding Graduate in Mathematics.
The Math Club and Alaska Alpha over 2016-2017
The UAS Math Club (and the Alaska Alpha Chapter of PME) held meetings almost every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Three talks were given over the year: Jeff Guyon gave a talk on Mathematical Questions from Genetics; Andrzej Piotrowski gave a talk on an intuitive introduction to the Riemann Zeta Function and some of its mysteries; and David D'Amore a soil scientist from the Pacific Northwest Research Station (down the trail from UAS) gave a talk on the Mathematical Basis for Soil Science, discussing mathematical/statistical ideas that appear in his research.
Three mathematics majors represented UAS in the Putnam Competition this year - Evan Carnahan, Blake Fletcher and Benjamin Malander.
Faculty News over 2016-2017
Andrzej was busy during his one year sabbatical. Here's what he had to say about his activities.
While in Fresno, I developed new teaching materials, math club activities, and research partnerships. In addition, I gave four talks, attended thirteen talks on various topics, participated in one workshop on mentoring math majors, and took part in a seminar series on zeros and combinatorics, or "Zerotorics," as we liked to call it. It was also nice to be able to explore the Sierra-Nevada wilderness on the weekends. Back in Juneau, I gave a talk at a UAS Math Club/PME meeting, wrote a grant proposal that could provide scholarship support to students, joined the Math Alliance (www.mathalliance.org), had an article accepted for publication in Mathematics Magazine entitled "Proof without Words: On Sums of Squares and Triangles," and continued to work on some ongoing research projects.
Overall, it was a very productive and stimulating sabbatical and now I'm looking forward to getting back into full-time teaching this fall. to engage in research in pure mathematics and to develop new teaching strategies for the UAS course on Complex Variables (MATH S410).
Megan Buzby kept busy as President-elect of the UAS Faculty Senate, and is looking forward to her year as the UAS Faculty Senate President over the 2018 academic year.