The Norwich University Mathematics Department continued its tradition of outstanding teaching, scholarship and service in the past few years. Several of our students have had achievements that went well beyond their normal academic requirements. Our students presented at mathematics conferences. They competed in mathematics competitions of all kinds, including the popular “Integration Bee”. Many of our students and former students won prestigious competitive scholarships. Several faculty members of the Mathematics Department earned individual awards and honors. We will also highlight some of the new faculty members in our department.

Exceptional Student Activity

In addition to the high demands normally placed on our students, our mathematics students are nevertheless engaged in extra-curricular academic events and research. Here are some highlights:

Eight Norwich University mathematics majors, accompanied by Keith Brudnicki from Alumni Relations and Assistant Professor Darlene Olsen, traveled to the second annual Spuyten Duyvil Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (SDUMC) held at The College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York on Saturday, April 14, 2007. This one day conference featured presentations by undergraduate students and faculty in mathematics and computer science from thirteen undergraduate institutions.

Seven NU students presented academic papers at SDUMC. For more information about the conference itself, visit the conference website. Also visit a slide show of photographs from the conference.

Here is a summary of the presentations given by our students:

  • Rachel Brudnicki, a junior mathematics major presented “Understanding Sudoku Puzzles.” Professor Susan Diesel advised her.
  • Brian Juskiewicz, a sophomore mathematics and electrical engineering major, presented “Analysis of RLC Circuits using Differential Equations.” Professor Darlene Olsen advised him.
  • Joseph Landry, a junior mathematics and physics major, presented “Finding Patterns in Sporadic Physical Phenomena (Space Weather).” Professor Gary Parker advised him.
  • Kevin LeClair, a senior mathematics major, presented “Perplex Numbers.” This was original work done with Professor Rob Poodiack.
  • Desislava Slavova, a sophomore mathematics and civil engineering major, presented “Applying Benford’s Law.” Professor Darlene Olsen advised him.
  • Michael Zalewski, a sophomore mathematics and mechanical engineering major, presented “Dijsktra's Algorithm and the Shortest Route Problem.” Professor Ernie True advised him.
  • Victoria Wilson, a sophomore mathematics and physics major presented “Reality vs. Relativity.” Professor Darlene Olsen advised her.

The 5th annual integration bee was held on April 12, 2007. An incredible 45 students spent a Thursday evening working on integrals for prizes and for the fun of it. Congratulations to Stuart Schutta and Nataly Patino who took first and second prizes respectively.
More details about the 5th annual integration bee.
View a power point slide show of the competition.

Congratulations to Brian Juskiewicz for his achievement in the 67th Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, on Saturday December 2nd 2006. Only the best mathematics undergraduates in the United States and Canada participate in this prestigious and grueling eight-hour event. The contest consists of questions that could require knowledge from anywhere in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum, and therefore, senior mathematics students have a significant advantage. For this reason, we are extremely proud of the performance of N.U. sophomore Brian Juskiewicz, who received an official rank of 1089 out of the 3640 students. This is even more impressive in light of the fact that many large schools have extensive training sessions to prepare for this contest. Indeed, most of the top finishers come from a relatively small list of universities (for example, 81 of the top 500 scores are from students at M.I.T., and another 45 are from Harvard). We are also very encouraged about the fact that five of our contestants this year were not seniors. We are already eagerly looking forward to next year!

For more about the competition itself and about our success in the previous year (the 2005 contest), please visit:  Math Competition Story, The Competition Site, and a Photo of Pres. Schneider’s Prize Presentation.

Matthew Burger and John Waltour represented Norwich University and finished third at the first collegiate mathematics competition for the Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America (NESMAA) in November 2006. Congratulations! The contest was created and organized by Associate Professor Rob Poodiack of Norwich University. The contestants are teams of students.

In addition, Matt Burger and John Walthour presented the talk, “Vertex-magic total labelings”, based on work from their undergraduate mathematics research project, which was sponsored by NASA.

Three students presented talks in December 2006 as part of our Mathematics Colloquium Series. Each talk was based on the student’s senior seminar. The talks were as follows:

  • “On the Similarity of Jordan Forms of Nilpotent Matrices”, by Matthew Burger
  • “Vertex-magic total labeling”, by Min-Hsiu Cheng
  • “Use of Perplex Numbers in Special Relativity”, by Kevin LeClair

Joseph Landry, Brian Juskiewicz and Aaron Arzamendi were the respective winners of the October, November and January installments of the U.S. National Collegiate Mathematics Competition. Joseph Landry has won the March installment. Waclaw Timoszyk, Associate Professor of Mathematics, is organizing the Norwich University participation in this contest. The U.S. National Collegiate Mathematics Championship will be held this year in San Jose California during MathFest 2007.

Mathematics majors Kathleen Smith, Anthony Francis and Timothy Phelps have all competed for, and were awarded very competitive scholarships through the Department of Defense Information Assurance Program and/or the Federal Cyber Service Scholarship.

For more information about these scholarships and programs, see DOD Information Assurance Site and Cyber Service Scholarship Site.

Kathleen Smith co-authored a paper entitled, “Vertex-magic total labeling of multiple complete graphs”. This paper has been accepted for publication in the professional peer-reviewed mathematics journal, Congressus Numerantium. She has since graduated in May 2006 with a Double Major in Mathematics and Chemistry, and was awarded a Presidential Fellowship for exceptional performance.

Two of our other 2006 mathematics graduates presented talks at the Hudson River Mathematics Conference in April 2006, at Westfield State College, as follows:

  • “Generating Functions 101”, by Anthony Francis; and
  • “Applications of Wavelets for Compressing and Filtering Data”, by Krenar Komoni.

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Faculty Awards, Honors and Promotions

Gerard LaVarnway, Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Mathematics Department received a Norwich University Faculty Development Curriculum Development Grant for Summer 2007.  Professor LaVarnway’s project was to write a Mathematica© manual for MA318 – Cryptology. Specifically, Professor LaVarnway developed a laboratory manual that includes 10 individual projects that include encryption and decryption of historical and modern ciphers. The use of Mathematica© allows MA318 students to harness the computing power of Mathematica© and to develop programming skills in a rapid prototyping environment.

Cathy Frey, Professor of Mathematics, was promoted to Dean of the School of Mathematics and Sciences at Norwich University. In addition, she was awarded a Category I DANA professorship for outstanding scholarship, service and teaching. Gaye Symington, speaker of the Vermont House, has nominated Professor Frey to the Vermont Commission on Women.  The Commission’s purpose is to help women achieve legal, economic, social and political equality in Vermont.

Rob Poodiack, Associate Professor of Mathematics, won the prestigious Homer L. Dodge Award for Excellence in Teaching for 2005. This award has been given every other year to only one professor from the entire University. In addition, he was awarded an Independent Study Leave to work for one term on Real Analysis at the University of Vermont.

For more about Poodiack’s honor, visit: 2005 Convocation Story.

Steve Wiitala, Professor of Mathematics, was awarded an Independent Study Leave which he used to work on statistical analysis in collaboration with Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Hitchcock medical center.

Gerard LaVarnway, Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Mathematics Department received a Norwich University Faculty Development Curriculum Development Grant for Summer 2007.  Professor LaVarnway’s project was to write a Mathematica© manual for MA318 – Cryptology. Specifically, Professor LaVarnway developed a laboratory manual that includes 10 individual projects that include encryption and decryption of historical and modern ciphers. The use of Mathematica© allows MA318 students to harness the computing power of Mathematica© and to develop programming skills in a rapid prototyping environment.

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New Faculty

Susan Diesel, Assistant Professor of Mathematics was added to our tenure track faculty last year, after a very successful Visiting Position here at Norwich University. She received her PhD in Mathematics from Northeastern University in algebraic geometry. She has worked as a Research Associate at the Center for Mathematics and Quantitative Education at Dartmouth College. She has done research for software companies that involved developing Internet browser technology and mathematical software.

Professor Diesel’s book, “Principles of Calculus Modeling, an Interactive Approach,”" co-authored with Donald Kreider and Dwight Lahr, is currently used at Dartmouth College to teach first quarter calculus. In addition, the companion ;Web site is used by schools around the world. It contains interactive applets, homework problems, worked examples, and extensive links to applications.

For more about Diesel’s book, visit The Book’s Companion Web site.

Elizabeth Mathai, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, joins our tenure track faculty after a very successful Visiting Position with us here at Norwich University. She also has teaching experience at the U.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore India, as well as the T. John College of Science and Arts in Bangalore. Her Ph.D. thesis was on mathematical models in thermodiffusive elasticity. She is also on the faculty of the Vermont Mathematics Initiative for the Masters Degree Program in Education with specialty in K-6 mathematics, offered by the University of Vermont.

Darlene Olsen, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, joins our tenure track faculty with teaching experience at St. Michael’s college as well as Johnson State College and the University of Vermont. She received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany, in Ergodic Theory. She has also worked at the New York State Department of Labor as a Statistician and Program Research Specialist.

Jeffrey Olson, Visiting Professor of Mathematics, just completed his PhD in June at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His main area of expertise is advanced algebraic structures. His two recent publications are as follows:

  • “Subdirectly Irreducible Residuated Semilattices and Positive Universal Classes”, Studia Logica, Vol. 83, (1-3) (2006), pp. 393-406.
  • “Finiteness Conditions on Varieties of Residuated Structures”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois at Chicago, June 2006.

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Professional Faculty Activity

Gerard LaVarnway

Mathematics Prof. LaVarnway published an article:

“A Characterization of Fourier Series of Stepanov Almost-periodic Functions” in the Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications (Springer). It can be viewed electronically at the Journal’s Web site.

He also presented a talk, “Who Wants To Be A Mathematician?” at the South Burlington High School Career/Job Expo in the Spring of 2006.

Ernest True

Mathematics Prof. True has been conducting research in the application of numerical models to the study of coastal ocean currents. The numerical models use the finite element method to approximate solutions to a system of partial differential equations that describe the tidal and non-tidal currents of the oceans. Currently Professor True is working with colleagues from Dartmouth College and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to develop a real-time simulation of the currents in Casco Bay, Maine. He is a member of a users group of numerical modelers who hold workshops and conferences to share their work and present their results to others who are involved with modeling ocean currents, environmental protections and commercial fishing in the Gulf of Maine.

Ted Marsden

Mathematics Prof. Marsden is an integral member of the Vermont Mathematics Partnership. This is funded by a five year grant received from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. The grant to Vermont supports projects designed to help students meet the goals of federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation. He is a member of the team that has created courses offered to grades 5-8 mathematics educators. He is a member of the team responsible for instructing these courses.

Professor Marsden instructs and develops courses in the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, a program of professional development for elementary teachers. He is now writing (as co-author) mathematics content material that will form the text for two mathematics courses to be offered to elementary teachers in Vermont, with the first course to be offered at several sites in 2007.

Prof. Marsden is the co-developer of a mathematics contest designed for high school students in Vermont. The Talent Search Contest, first offered in 1993, is an activity sponsored by the Vermont State Mathematics Coalition, and now has entries received by more than 500 students per year.

Rob Poodiack

Associate Prof. of Mathematics Poodiack conducted a workshop entitled “A Guide to Interactive Web Pages,” at the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM) February, 2007 in Boston, Mass.

He also gave a contributed talk, "Circles, Diamonds and Squares: A New Trigonometry for a New Pi," at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, LA on January 8, 2007.  He attended a short course in celebration of Leonhard Euler's 300th birthday.

Professor Poodiack also organized the first collegiate mathematics competition for the Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America (NESMAA) meeting in November, 2006. Eight teams totaling 22 undergraduates tackled the contest problems. The students came from all over the Northeast. The competition should be an annual tradition at NESMAA fall meetings for years to come. Professor Poodiack also organizes the contributed papers sessions NESMAA section meetings.

As a direct result of this work, Professor Poodiack published a review of Douglas Faires’ book “First Steps for Math Olympians,” in the October 2007 issue of Crux Mathematicorum, a Canadian problem-solving journal, and is slated to published a couple of reviews for issues in 2008.

Dan McQuillan

Assistant Prof. of Mathematics McQuillan presented the talk, “Vertex-magic total labelings of regular graphs” at the Ottawa-Carleton Discrete Mathematics Workshop on May 26, 2007. The conference was held at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada.

He also presented the talk, “Vertex-magic and edge-magic total labeling of 2-regular graphs” at the 20th Midwest Conference on Combinatorics Cryptography and Computing at Wichita State University on October 5, 2006. He also presented a talk on the subject of graph labeling at the 37th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing at Florida Atlantic University in March 2006. He also served as an external reader for a doctoral dissertation on graph labelings at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Professor McQuillan has three recent papers either accepted for publication, or to appear in print, as follows:

  • “Vertex-magic Total Labeling of Multiple Complete Graphs”, will appear in the journal, Congressus Numerantium (co-authored with Kathleen Smith).
  • “Edge-magic and Vertex-magic Total Labelings of Certain Cycles”, will appear in the journal, Ars Combinatoria.
  • “Vertex-magic Total Labeling of Odd Complete Graphs”, Discrete Mathematics, 305 (2005), pp. 240-249. (co-authored with Kathleen Smith).

Susan Diesel

Assistant Prof. of Mathematics Diesel attended Mathfest in San Jose in August 2007.She presented the paper, “Fish Populations in the San Francisco Bay, 1972–2002”.

She also attended the workshop, “Algebraic Combinatorics meets Inverse Systems” at the University of Montreal, January 19–20, 2007, as well as the annual conference on Vermont Women in Higher Education. This conference brings together women from around the state to discuss issues in education and development. Its theme was, Living Locally, Thinking Globally. It was held at Lake Morey Resort in Oct. 2006.

Elizabeth Mathai

Assistant Prof. of Mathematics Mathai lectured on probability theory during a two-day VMI (Vermont Mathematics Initiative) session during Jan.12-13, 2007, at the University of Vermont. She also participated in a two-day intensive session on October 27–28. During this session, both she and Professor Marsden provided instruction to K-6 mathematics teachers. The discussions allow the teachers to delve into new topics as well as deepening their understanding of familiar topics.

Darlene Olsen

Assistant Prof. of Mathematics Olsen participated in the reading the Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics exams. In June 2007, more than 400 high school and college teachers gather in Louisville, Kentucky to read the free-response section of the AP Statistics Exam that was administered to high school students in May. It is important for college professors to be involved in the reading to ensure that the AP scores reflect college level achievement.

In Aug. 2007, Prof. Olsen attended MathFest in San Jose, California. She presented two talks at the conference titled “Preparing Students for a Senior Seminar Research Project” and “Stimulating Statistics: Engaging Students in an Introductory Statistics Course.”

During the school year, Professor Olsen collaborated with Professor Carl Pinkham. In June 2007, Professor Pinkham presented their joint work titled “The use of the Pinkham-Pearson index for the comparison of community structure in BioSim2 to identify statistically-valid sectors of taxa with sites” at the North American Benthological Society (NEABS) 55th Annual Conference in Columbia, South Carolina.

Professor Olsen also gave a talk, “A Mathematician Working in a Nonacademic Position” to give career advice for undergraduate math majors interested in working as a statistician. This presentation was at the Spuyten Duyvil Undergraduate Mathematics Conference on April 14, 2007. She also served on a career panel.

In addition, she presented, “Mathematical Ties to Tying Neckties,” at the Norwich University Mathematics Colloquium Series on Nov. 14, 2006. She also presented the talk in Jan. 2007 to three classes at Canaan High School, as part of the Expanding Horizons XI outreach program. In addition, she also attended the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, LA at the beginning of January.

Cathy Frey

Prof. of Mathematics Cathy Frey presented a talk on the subject of creating animated Web pages for mathematics instruction at the 2006 Hawaii International Conference on Statistics, Mathematics and Related Fields.

Jeffrey Olson

Visiting Prof. of Mathematics Olson presented a colloquium talk, “Avoidable patterns In Words”, at the Norwich University Mathematics Colloquium Series on Jan. 23, 2007. In addition, he also presented the talk, “Structural completeness in varieties of residuated structures.” at the University of Vermont on Nove. 10, 2006. He also presented the talk, “Residuated semilattices and positive universal classes,” at the fall 2006 Meeting of the NES MAA.

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Contests and Events

The 5th annual integration bee was held on April 12, 2007. An incredible 45 students spent a Thursday evening working on integrals for prizes and for the fun of it. Congratulations to Stuart Schutta and Nataly Patino who took first and second prizes respectively.
More details about the 5th annual integration bee.
View a power point slide show of the competition.

The mathematics department continues to have an active colloquium series, consisting of monthly expository talks on many different topics in mathematics and mathematics applications.  View a mathematics colloquium.

Darlene Olsen and Rob Poodiack continue their involvement in the Norwich University chapter of the Mathematical Association of America.

Dan McQuillan continues to organize Norwich University’s participation in The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, an international contest sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America.

Prof. Poodiack is organizing the second collegiate math contest for the Northeastern section of the Mathematical Association of America. It will be held in November. The contestants are teams of students. Visit Prof. Poodiack’s personal site for more information.

Waclaw Timoszyk, associate professor of mathematics, is organizing the Norwich University participation in the U.S. National Collegiate Mathematics Championship, to be held this year in San Jose California, during Mathfest 2007.

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