Vermont Alpha
Saint Michael's College
2006-2007 Chapter Report

 

Advisor and Officers

Advisor: Professor Zsuzsanna Kadas

Co-Presidents: Sarah Hamilton and Laura Beaudin

Number of New Members Inducted:

8

Number of Continuing Members:

6

Describe the two most interesting or unusual chapter activities this year: 1)The celebration of Math Awareness Month with the theme of Mathematics and the Brain included of a talk by Professor David Boynton of our own Psychology Department on the topic: Neural Networks for Cognition: How to Think Like a Connectionist.

2)An enthusiastic group of about 30 students were surprised to learn of the applications of Linear Algebra to research in Psychology. The talk was followed by a pizza supper for all attendees.

3)The Induction Ceremony held on October 30, 2006 began with a public lecture: Modeling Forest Fires with Percolation Theory by Peter Otto, Ph.D.; Willamette University; This was followed by the ceremony and a dinner to which parents of inductees were invited.

Do any of your chapter members plan to attend or present a paper at the PME national meeting at MathFest in San Jose, California?

No.

Do you have any news about current students or recent graduates? For example, scholarships or other awards, acceptances to graduate school, paper presentations at conferences. :

Laura Beaudin and Sarah Hamilton received the Outstanding Math Major award at graduation; David Miller was Pi Mu Epsilon flag bearer at Baccalaureate.

Six PME members were among 13 Saint Michael䴜s students to present papers at the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference at Siena College in Loudonville, NY on Saturday, April 21st: Andrea Austin, Laura Beaudin, Katie Crawford, Sarah Hamilton, David Miller, Lauren Remmes.Story is at website: http://www.smcvt.edu/admission/news/news_story.asp?iNewsID=922&strBack=%2Fne ws%2FDefault%2Easp Andrea Austin will attend an REU at Miami U. of Ohio (Summer 2007)

Graduate Schools: Sarah Hamilton Colorado State; Laura Beaudin Univ. Of Massachusetts at Amherst

Jessica Scheld received her M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Vermont

Several students work on collaborative research projects in applied graph theory with Professors Jo Ellis-Monaghan and Greta Pangborn, with funding from the Vermont Genetics Network, Cadence Design Systems, and NASA-VT Space

Grant Consortium: Laura Beaudin, Sarah Hamilton, David Miller, Andrea Austin and Jessica Scheld