Volume 1.0 | Third Issue | Summer 1998 | Archived Issues
From the Keyboard
Welcome to the third issue of the Integral found at: http://aslan.wheatonma.edu/~integral
Mathematics and Computer Science at Wheaton College is in high gear. Enrollments in our majors are up, students are attending conferences and publishing their research, and the department sports the state of the art in teaching and lab spaces. This e-mag is our way of connecting you, our alumnae/i, to the excitement that fills our offices, hallways, classes and labs.
Thank you for your responses to our previous issue. I've organized comments with your names and URL's in a quick table for now. In this issue, we feature Connie Anderson Edmundson '70 who is presently teaching mathematics in Cambridge, England.
Our current students are interning at various places. This summer, we introduce you to Ken Aspeslagh and Glen Aspeslagh, class of 2000. Twin brothers, Ken and Glen have excelled in the Wheaton environment of small class sizes and regular interactions with the MathCS faculty. Last spring at Honors Convocation, Ken and Glen were awarded the Fred Kollett Award in Mathematics and Computer Science, a rare award for sophomores.
Glen brings artistic talent to the world of computing. From his work on Glen Space to his service on the design of the Town of Norton page to his work on the Integral, he is part of an emerging elite who understand both the needs of future world-wide-web users and the computing skills it takes to meet those needs. Perhaps most important, Glen's mathematical and programming maturity serve as the bedrock of his talent.
Ken is one of the nicest hackers you'll ever meet. Although he is known for his wild 20+ hour runs of programming and leadership on software teams, it is common to find him in the Kollett Academic Computing Center helping someone with a simple question. His collection of creative applications include interfaces for young children, a threaded discussion list manager, a graffiti wall, and the WebCam project. The breadth of computer science in his work is impressive, including databases, networking and programming languages learned on his own such as JavaScript and Perl. Oh, and if you are interested in playing hangman on a PalmPilot device, he's programmed that for you too.
This summer, Ken and Glen are employed at Avid Technology.
Please send us an email ... we'd love to hear from you. Enjoy v1.0 of the Integral!
Meet our Alumnae/i
Connie Anderson Edmundson '70, a mathematics major while at Wheaton, visited the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science in the fall of 1997. In a wonderful exchange, Shelly Leibowitz and Connie shared experiences of teaching mathematics and the changes in pedagogy that have occurred. Connie noted the challenges while teaching in both the US and British systems.
Since 1970, Connie has been busy:
- graduate work in mathematical logic, Bristol University, England
- M.Sc in Operations Research from Sacred Heart Univ., CT, USA
- teaching at:
- Western Connecticut State Univ.
(calculus, op. research) - University of Cambridge - Dept of Education
(pure math) - St. Andrew's College, Cambridge, England
(pure math and statistics)
- Western Connecticut State Univ.
"The Wheaton campus was really in its full glory that afternoon and I'll always remember the air fragrant with the scent of pine needles. I was very impressed with what I saw of Wheaton. The campus has developed gracefully and the atmosphere reflected academic diligence, purpose and high standards."
(email: Nov. 1997)
Connie Anderson Edmundson '70 and daughter Isabel on campus November 1997. The Science Center, home of MathCS, is in the background.
A Call for Participation
Are you interested in coming to campus to meet our students and present a talk on your work? We welcome your involvement and the students greatly appreciate hearing the advice from professionals in the field. Let us know.
On this note, are you coming to AutumnFest '98 weekend this year? AutumnFest'98 is on October 2-4, 1998. If yes, let us know if you'd like a personal tour of the department, especially our new smart classroom and NSF-funded lab. Look for details in mailings from the Alumnae/i Office, phone (508.285.8207) or email (alum@wheatonma.edu) the Alumnae/i Office for AutumnFest '98 details.
We are starting a page with a list of MathCS alumnae/i email addresses and links to personal and/or company web pages. The site will offer our current students a chance to meet (virtually) some of our previous graduates, as well as provide alumnae/i with a place to match old names with new links. Please send us your URL and/or email address so we can make you a part of this page.
News Bytes
So what's been happening in MathCS? For starters, we've had company. In October 1997 and then again in April 1998, Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Computer, addressed students as part of the Wheaton Distinguished Fellows Program.
Also in April, Tom Banchoff, Professor of Mathematics at Brown University and President-Elect of the MAA gave a Puzzles in Science talk on "Puzzling ../images from Two, Three, and Four Dimensions" as part of Math Awareness Week. This was a fantastic talk, and the room was packed. Our very own Bill Bloch gave a Puzzles in Science talk "To Infinity--And Beyond! Can there be numbers (or anything) larger than infinity?"
Speaking of bringing folks in, Mike Gousie, who has just finished his PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Computer Science, will be joining the department this fall in a tenure-track position. Mike's research is in computer graphics, and he comes with a strong record of undergraduate teaching, so he will be a wonderful asset to the department. Help us welcome Mike to Wheaton.
And while we brought folks in, we've also been sending them out. In November 1997, three faculty and three students attended the Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America Fall Meeting in Springfield, Mass.
In April 1998, Tommy Ratliff and four students attended the Hudson River Valley Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at Union College in Schenectady, New York. And also in April, Mark LeBlanc and three students attended The Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges Third Annual Northeastern Conference at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut where all three students presented their research.
The NSF-funded project entitled "Student-Managed Web Servers and the Delivery of Quantitative Results -- Redefining Computer Literacy for the 21st Century" is underway. The vision is to expose introductory general education students in Universal Machine (COMP 106) to the server side of the client-server paradigm, in particular the serving of their own quantitative (homework) results and discussion of those results. In January 1998, six students worked with Dr. LeBlanc and Dr. Ratliff to set up the equipment in the lab, including18 WinNT workstations, each partitioned to also run Linux, and a WinNT server. In the first iteration of the course, Tommy Ratliff had non-science students programming in JavaScript and practicing to run a world-wide-web server. Check out the online course syllabus.
An increasing number of students are pursuing Independent Study. Here is a list of some of the recent (and coming) offerings:
Complete details of the entire MathCS program can be found at our department site.
Faculty Highlights
Bill Bloch just completed his third year at Wheaton and finally feels settled in enough to pursue some of his research interests. He's currently spending the summer in Portland, Oregon as a visiting scientist at the Neurological Science Institute of the Oregon Health Sciences University.
He's collaborating with a team of theoreticians who are exploring such questions as: Is synaptic plasticity the real-life equivalent to the weighting parameters used in neural net modelling? How can we model the motions of the spinal column as a set of differential forms? How can we think of the interplay of back muscles as a group or monoid of matrices? Is there a benefit to looking at these from a dynamical systems perspective?
These questions, and others, arise from the Institute's main work of aiding patients who have suffered nervous system damage. Bill is proud to be able to use mathematics to assist in this endeavor.
Bill is looking forward to integrating the work of the summer into his Ordinary Differential Equations class in the fall and Dynamical Systems in the spring. The ethical and biotechnological issues will also surface in his First Year Seminar "Technology: The Means of Salvation or Tools of Evil?"
Our department staff currently numbers 5 full-time members and one half-time member, all PhD's. Web pages for each member are also available from the department web page
http://www.wheatonma.edu/academic/academicdept/MathCS
Bill Bloch
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
bbloch@wheatonma.edu
Mike Gousie
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
mgousie@wheatonma.edu
Mark LeBlanc
Associate Professor of Computer Science & Department Chair
mleblanc@wheatonma.edu
Rochelle Leibowitz
Professor of Mathematics
rleibowi@wheatonma.edu
Tommy Ratliff
Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
tratliff@wheatonma.edu
Janice Sklensky
Assistant Professor of Mathematics (part-time)
jsklensk@wheatonma.edu
The Integral
Integral v1 - Summer 1998
Archived Issues | Computer Science | Mathematics
Wheaton College
26 East Main Street
Norton, Massachusetts 02766
Phone: 508.286.3970
Fax: 508.285.8278
Editor: Mark LeBlanc, Associate Professor of Computer Science & Department Chair
mleblanc@wheatonma.edu | website
Graphics Design: Glen Aspelagh, '00
gaspesla@wheatonma.edu
Transition Design: Nick Ralton, '07
nralton@wheatonma.edu
Support for women in mathematics
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Rachelle DeCoste earns grant from the MAA to support a workshop for women in mathematics. (more)
Stats and Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics faculty suggest evidence for convergent evolution (more)
Mathematics students as consultants
Professor of Mathematics Michael Kahn brings 'Mathematical Consulting' course to Wheaton. (more)
Expanding the QA reach
The group spearheaded by mathematics professors Bill Goldbloom-Bloch, Tommy Ratliff, and Michael Kahn won a grant of $99,500 from the Teagle Foundation to expand the reach of quantitative analysis (QA) in the college's multidisciplinary curriculum. (more)