Student Highlights

Jeff Patterson co-authored with Dr. Ionascu, Primes of the form a2+qb2, which will appear in Studia Universitatis Babes, Bolyai Mathematica, 2013

Kerri Edgar, Jacob Hand & Stevan Rodney Parks received scholarships totaling $36,800 for 2013-14 through the CRAFT-STEM program, under the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (NSF #1136356) Harrison Sharitt & Kerri Edgar were selected for $4,500 CRAFT-STEM Internships and worked with the Georgia STEM Honors Camp, POWER Math and PRIME Math Camps. Stevan Rodney Parks & Kerri Edgar were selected as Peer Leaders in the CSU STEM Initiative Program

Visiting Scholar: Dr. Dorin Andrica This Fall, Dr. Dorin Andrica will be lecturing as the 13th Mildred Miller Fort Foundation Visiting Scholar in European Studies. Dr. Andrica has published dozens of books and journal articles, with research interests in Number Theory, Approximations Theory, andCritical Point Theory. He is well known for his Andrica Conjecture about the gap between consecutive primes. Joining us from the Babeş-Bolya University, Cluj, Romania where he is a full professor in the faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Dr. Andrica has served as a visiting scholar at notable universities around the worldincluding the University of Ancona (Italy), the University of Heidelberg (Germany), the University of Genoble (France), the University of Texas at Dallas (USA), and the King Saud University (Saudi Arabia).

Departmental News & Events Fall 2013

New Faculty

Our department welcomes two new faculty members for Fall 2013:

A fond farewell! Congratulations to Dr. Renjin Tu on her retirement. She has been with CSU since 1994, enlightening students of statistics and cooking amazing treats for the department. Your wisdom & egg rolls will be missed!

Dr. Guihong Fan has research interests in mathematical biology, population dynamics, mathematical modeling in ecology, epidemiology, &

Dr. Houbin Lewis

Fang has research interests in early childhood education, technology in mathematics teaching & learning

Alumni News

Pedro Perez-Nagera (2012) was admitted, on a statesmanship, to the graduate program in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at University of Texas, Dallas

Richard “Keith” Roop-Eckart (2012) was awarded a scholarship to study Number Theory in his doctoral program at University of Georgia, Athens

96th

Percentile on the Major

Fields Assessment

for 2011

Graduates!

Highlights & Achievements

Philosophy Highlights The department congratulates Dr. Markus Weidler in his new position as full time lecturer in our philosophy program. His research, including a recent article entitled, “Divine Hiddenness and Discrimination: A Philosophical Dilemma,” will enhance courses offered in our philosophy minor and future plans for a four year degree. Our faculty members are currently working with a cross-disciplinary team to explore an expanded curriculum that may be available as soon as Fall 2014. To learn more about our philosophy program or philosophy club meetings go to:

http://phil.columbusstate.edu

Tournaments & Contests The Applied Math & Statistics Center held the first Calculus Contest, Friday April 19, 2013 as part of the Math Day 2013. Three cash prizes ($100, $60, and $40) will be awarded to the top winners in the categories of Pre-Calculus, Calculus I and Calculus II. In addition, we hosted 115 high school students from eleven schools at the CSU Regional Mathematics Tournament.

2013 STEM Honors Summer Camp

Fun & FUNDED!

Twenty four of the top math and science high school students participated in a two-week residential summer camp exploring Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM). Dr.

Tim Howard, mathematics professor and director of the Math & Science Learning Center, coordinated the camp with Dr. Kim Shaw (physics). Students engaged in activities and research projects in all disciplines, including work in geometric image processing led by Dr. Ben Kamau.

The camps is funded in part by the $1 million Robert M. Noyce Grant (National Science Foundation #1136356), awarded to Dr.

Tim Howard (PI), Dr. Kim Shaw, Dr. Deborah Gober, and Dr.

Cindy Ticknor (Co-PIs). The funding for the camp was supported with an additional $8000 from local businesses including Pratt& Whitney, Don Jones Construction, Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants, Society for American Military Engineers, Cott Beverages, Path Tech, and St. Francis Hospital. The Robert M. Noyce Grant also supports $10,000 scholarships for students pursuing teacher certification in math and science. For more information, visit the UTeach website at: http://uteach.columbusstate.edu

Research & Colloquium Highlights

Collectively, the department published eighteen peer-reviewed articles last year in mathematics, philosophy, statistics and the scholarship of teaching and learning. The research projects included Dr. Ionascu’s work with tessellations and regular octahedrons and Dr. Nguyen’s development of discrete models for biological populations. In applied statistics, Dr. Bhandary researched global tests of p-values used in biological data mining and resampling approaches used in intraclass correlation coefficients, while Dr. Weidler produced several works including , Terrorism & Eschatology, theological beliefs concerning the final events precipitating the end of the world. Additionally, Dr. Howard and Dr. Ticknor co-authored a paper on the effectiveness of the Peer Instruction Leader project underway at the Math & Science Learning Center.

2012-13 Faculty Research Publications

Dai, H., Charnigo, R., Vyhlidal, C.A., Jones, B.L. and Bhandary, M. (2013). Mixed Modeling and Sample Size Calculations for Identifying Housekeeping Genes. To appear in Statistics in

Medicine.

Bhandary, M. and Fujiwara, F. (2013). “Test for intraclass correlation coefficient under unequal family sizes” To appear in Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods.

Bhandary, M. and Fujiwara, F. (2013). “An Alternative test for the equality of intraclass correlation coefficients under unequal family sizes for several populations” To appear in Journal of

Modern Applied Statistical Methods.

Bansal, N.K., Bhandary, M. and Fujiwara, F. (2012). “Bayes Estimation of Intraclass Correlation Coefficients Under Unequal Family Sizes.” Communications in Statistics – Simulation and

Computation. Bhandary, M. and Zhang, X. (2012). “Comparison of several tests for combining several independent tests”. Journal

of Modern Applied Statistical Methods. Dai, H., Bhandary, M., Becker, M.L., Leeder,S.J., Gaedigk, R., and

Motsinger- Reif, A.A. (2012). “Global Tests of P-values for Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction Models in Selection of Optimal Number of Target Genes”. Bio Data Mining

Lane, J.E., Dimick, J., Syrax, M., Bhandary, M., and Rudy, B.S.

(2012), “Bioterrorism and disaster preparedness among medical specialties”. American Journal of Disaster Medicine, Vol. 7 No. 1, 48

– 60.

Ionascu E., Obando R., (2012) “Cubes in {0,1,...,n}^3”. Integers, 12A (John Selfridge Memorial Issue), Art. A9

Ionascu E., (2012), “Regular octahedrons in {0,1,...,n}^3”. Fasc. Math., Vol. 48 pp. 49-59. Ionascu E., Stephens R., (2012), “Moments and the Range of the Derivative”. Real Analysis Exchange Vol. 37, 1 pp. 1-17. Ionascu E., (2012), “ Half domination arrangements in regular and semi-regular tessellation type graphs”. Advanced Modeling

and Optimization, Vol. 14, 1pp. 233-245.

Matsunaga, H., Murakami, S. and Nguyen, Van Minh (2012) “Decomposition and variation-of-constants formula in the phase space for integral equations.” Funkcial. Ekvac. 55, no. 3, 479–520.

Lutscher F., Nguyen Van Minh. (2012) “Traveling waves in discrete models of biological populations with sessile stages”. Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications. In press. Nguyen, Van Minh (2013). “On the asymptotic behaviour of Volterra difference equations.” Journal of Difference Equations

and Applications V.19, no. 8, pp. 1317-1330.

Shaw, K. A., Ticknor, C., & Howard, T. (2013). The Effect of Peer Leader Instruction on Introductory University Science and Mathematics Course Performance: Preliminary Results. Perspectives in Learning, 20. Stancu, Alin (2013). On the invariance and general cohomology comparison theorems." J. Homotopy and Relat. Struct, no1, 127-140 16D90 (16E35)

Weidler, M. and I. Aijaz (2013). “Divine Hiddenness and Discrimination: A Philosophical Dilemma,” Sophia Vol. 52 (1): 95-114

Weidler, M. (2012) “Daring To Be Grateful: Robert C. Solomon on Gratitude in the Face of Fanaticism” in Passion, Death, and

Spirituality: The Philosophy of Robert C. Solomon. Eds. Kathleen Higgins and David Sherman. Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London: Springer, 223–244.

Innovations in Research & Instruction

Congratulations to Dr. Eugen Ionascu and Dr. Ben

Kamau on receiving $18,000 in grant funding. Dr. Ionascu applied for technology fee grants to upgrade instructional computers, and Dr. Kamau developed a supplemental instruction project that is part of the university’s initiative to improve student retention, progression, and graduation rates. Dr. Inessa Levi has published a set of Excel worksheets as a supplement for the text we use for mathematical modeling, Functions and Change: A Modeling Approach to College Algebra by Crauder, Evans and Noell. This supplement is available to instructors as a 2.2Mb Zip file on the publisher’s (Cengage) website.

Weidler, M. (2012), “Terrorism and Eschatology,” The

International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, Vol. 2, Issue 3, 1-8. Weidler, M. (2012) "Heidegger's "Fourfold" as a Critique of Idolatry." Monatshefte 104.4: 489-510.

Xiao, Y., Liu, J. and Bhandary, M. (2012). ”Resampling approaches for common intraclass correlation coefficients”. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nonrwa.2012.07.011 Zot H.G., Hasbun J.E., Nguyen Van Minh. (2012). "Second-Chance Signal Transduction Explains Cooperative Flagellar Switching". PlosOne Journal, p1-8, V7, No. 7, e41098. Online access at http://ajpcell.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajpcell.00491.2009v1

2012-13 Conference Presentations

Fang, H. (Presentation), A Tier-III Intervention for Elementary Mathematics Word Problems Solving. The 111th Annual Convention of the School Science and Mathematics Association, Birmingham, AL (November, 2012).

Howard, T., Gober, D., Shaw, K., & Ticknor, C. (Poster Presentation). Columbus Regional Academy of Future Teachers of STEM (CRAFT-STEM). Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program Conference, Washington, D.C. (May 30, 2013).

Ionascu, E. (Colloquium). Half domination arrangements in regular and semi-regular tessellation type, Valdosta State University, (April 6, 2012) Ionascu, E. (Colloquium). Ehrahrt polynomial for lattice platonic solids, University of West Georgia, (October 27, 2011)

Nguyen, Van Minh Invited talk at Colloquium of the Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam Academy of Sciences and Technology (May 24, 2013, Hanoi, Vietnam)

Nguyen, Van Minh Invited talk at the Asian Conference of Mathematics 2013 (June 30-July 4, 2013, Busan, South Korea)

Nguyen, Van Minh Invited talk at the Evolution Equations Day (August 20, 2013, Baltimore).

Shaw, K., Ticknor, C., & Howard, T. (Presentation). Developing a STEM Teacher Pipeline, Georgia Scholarship of STEM Teaching & Learning Conference, Statesboro, Georgia (March 8, 2013).

Ticknor, C., Howard, T., & Shaw, K. (Poster Presentation). STEM and Branches: Update on the Columbus State University STEM-II Initiative. STEM Scholarship of Teaching & Learning Conference, Statesboro, Georgia (March 8, 2013).

Weidler, M. “The Black Christ, Violence, and Political Love” (sole presenter), delivered at the NCA’s [National Communication Association’s] 99th Annual Convention, held at Orlando, FL. November 15-18, 2012.

Weidler, M. “Terrorism and Eschatology” (sole presenter), delivered at the Second International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society, held in Robson Square, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada from 20-22 February 2012. Weidler, M. “Pop Art and Visual Piety: Looking at Warhol’s The

Last Supper,” invited public lecture for the CSU Department of Art Dialogue Series, organized by Prof. Hannah Israel: 11 Oct 2012, Crit Space 2.