CHAIRS’ THOUGHTS

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Welcome to the Department of Mathematics at East Tennessee State University. I am now beginning my fourth year as Department Chair, and could not have been prouder of all that our faculty and students do, on a daily basis, and with little fanfare, great efficiency, and exhibiting the kind of multi-tasking that would make an air traffic controller jealous. Our department is quite a different place today than it was a few years ago, primarily due to the various projects we have been able to launch with or without external support. Here is a partial list of some of the happenings over the last two or three years:

Active Adjuncts: Congratulations to Tom Prior on his new position at Providence Academy in Johnson City, Tenn. Congratulations to Joanne Pumariega on receiving the Above and Beyond teaching award awarded by OASIS. Congratulations to Corlis Robe, who, together with Edith Seier, received the C. Oswald George “Best Paper” award given by the Royal Statistical Society for their Teaching Statistics paper “Ducks and Green: An Introduction to the Ideas of Testing Hypotheses.”

Alumni return to the classroom: Alumni Joy Markman, City Commerce Solutions, Gray, Tenn; Renee Ferguson, Social Security Administration, Baltimore, Md; Joby Kaufman, Northeast State Technical Community College, and Rob Dauterman, Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, participated in the ETSU Annual Homecoming Alumni Return to the Classroom event in 2002 and 2003 respectively. Renee will be forming a Math Alumni Association.

Anant’s REU Program (see http://www.etsu.edu/math/godbole/nsf.htm) is now in its 14^th summer. For each of the past two years, an ETSU student has been one of the eight participants: Gabe Zimmer participated in 2001 and Joe Johnson in 2002.

ARCOTS: The inaugural Appalachian Regional Conference on the Teaching of Statistics (see http://www.etsu.edu/math/seier/ARCOTS.htm) was held at ETSU in March 2003. Edith Seier’s wonderful organization drew over 70 participants to our region for this day-long conference, including keynote speakers Jessica Utts (UC Davis), Richard Deveaux (Williams College) and Christine Anderson-Cook (Virginia Tech).

Awards Banquet: This annual event, held in April, honors our outstanding students and recognizes faculty and graduate students for their contributions. The 2002 faculty award winners were Edith Seier (research), George Poole (teaching) and Debbie Knisley (service). In 2003, the committee selected Teresa Haynes (research), Janice Huang (teaching) and Jeff Knisley (service). Graduate student awards for excellence in teaching and research went to Susan Hosler (2002) and David Atkins (2003). Banquet speakers were Gary Henson (2001), Sam Kaplan, UNCA 2002, and Gretchen Mathews, Clemson University 2003.

Beating the National Average: Our seniors beat the national average on the Mathematics Major Field Test they took in May 2002, as part of the ETSU Performance Funding Requirement. Way to go, Class of ’02!!

We are all Biologists now: Thanks to a major $100,000 grant received by grant maestro Jeff Knisley, we find ourselves in the enviable position of having to train undergraduates in various aspects of Quantitative Biology. The Institute for Quantitative Biology will soon be launched with Steve Karsai as Director. It will be a collaboration between over one dozen faculty members in Math, Biology and other departments. We are represented by the two Knisleys, Abdul Jarrah, Bob Gardner, Edith Seier, Bob Price, and Anant Godbole, with our biological co-conspirators being Steve Karsai, Hugh Miller, Lev Yampolsky, Dan Johnson, Darrell Moore, Karl Joplin and Niall Shanks. Twelve ETSU students will each receive $4650 in stipends and support for their work with these faculty members over the next two summers. See the Project Web page at http://www.etsu.edu/iqb/

Books: Jeff Knisley’s Calculus text is well on its way toward publication. His co-author is former Milligan College faculty member Kevin Shirley. Don Hong and Bob Gardner’s book Real Analysis with an Introduction to Wavelets will soon be published by Academic Press.

The Cameroon Connection: Janice and Tom Huang spent a very productive 2001-02 sabbatical year at the University of Buea in Cameroon, establishing a pipeline that has allowed us to attract three excellent graduate students to our department. We expect many more students to make the trip from Cameroon to Johnson City in the years to come!

College Awards: The 2002 College Research Award was given to Don Hong and the 2003 College Service Award to Lyndell Kerley.

The Council on Undergraduate Research awarded Gabe Zimmer a $3000 undergraduate research fellowship during the summer of 2002.

Developmental Mathematics: We are happy to welcome six new faculty members to our department, as the Department of Mathematics merged in fall 2003 with the Developmental Mathematics Program. We look forward to fully coalescing the two programs over the next year. Our new additions are D.C. Smith, Murray Butler, Robert Davidson, Sherry Hardin, Jamie McGill, and Daryl Stephens.

Doctoral Program: We have temporarily put on hold the launching of a Ph.D. program that features an early introduction to research, a focus on discrete and continuous modeling, and collaborative research with the ETSU colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and Public and Allied Health. The Institute for Quantitative Biology will undoubtedly have a distinguished role to play in the putative program – which has already received “permission to plan” from the ETSU Academic Council.

Ebey Lectures: Anant Godbole gave the Annual Sherwood Ebey Lectures at the University of the South, Sewanee, in April 2002.

External Review: We will be producing a self-study document this fall as we quietly and confidently make preparations for our periodic external departmental review to occur in the spring of 2004.

Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Awards, given by the Honors Programs, were awarded to Gabe Zimmer (2001) and Joe Johnson (2002).

Graduate School: Undergraduates Ree’l Street and Joe Johnson have begun graduate programs at Georgia Tech and Clemson respectively. Several others have stayed on at ETSU for their M.S. work.

Grantwriting Workshop: The CUR Grantwriting Workshop will be held at ETSU in July 2004. Anant Godbole will be Chair of the local organizing committee.

Michael Henning of the University of Natal spent the spring 2003 semester in our department. The quiet unassuming Mike was quite a hit with our graduate students while working with Teresa to write even more papers….

Congratulations to Jay Boland on his new permanent position of Director of the ETSU Honors Programs.

The Kellogg Foundation awarded our department, through a subcontract with the ETSU Kellogg Partnerships, a $40,000 award to Change the Infrastructure of K-8 Mathematics in Unicoi County. Two courses were taught by Edith Seier and Anant Godbole to teachers in Unicoi County. We have launched student tutoring and Family Math programs in Erwin. Debbie Knisley is the third coPI on the grant.

Debbie Knisley attended two cutting-edge workshops in the area of Mathematical Biology during the summer of 2002 – at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the DIMACS Center at Rutgers.

MAA Lecturer: Jeff Knisley will be the 2003-04 MAA Southeast Section Lecturer affording our department much publicity as he crisscrosses nine states this year.

We are all Math Educators now: Our involvement with mathematics outreach has been long-standing, with Janice Huang being at the forefront of all efforts in this arena -- such as the Eisenhower-funded workshops; and serving as President of UETCTM and TMTA. The renewal of our commitment toward teacher training started in June 2001, when Janice Huang, Rhona Cummings (CUAI), Debbie Knisley and Anant received a small but prestigious grant from NSF/AASCU to make improvements in one of our pre-service K-8 courses, namely MATH 1410. Only about 14 of 100 proposals were funded nationwide. That summer, George Poole joined the group as he, Debbie, Rhona, Vice Provost Mike Woodruff and Anant attended a K-8 mathematics workshop in San Diego to plan strategies for the future. Rick Norwood and George Poole attended the follow-up workshop in San Diego during the summer of 2002. George Poole, Rick Norwood, and Michael Marks attended a workshop in Washington D.C., soon after, even doing some research during the drive there, and came away with one of three original Exxon-Mobil grants to host a K-8 math brainstorming retreat in Johnson City with Western Carolina University – one of our sister San Diego/AASCU schools. The retreat was held in the spring of 2002. In 2002-03 we launched the Unicoi County project described above, and the summer of 2003 saw Janice Huang and Jeff Knisley receive a $55,000 ITQ (Eisenhower Title II) Grant to run very successful teachers’ workshops on Statistics and Mathematical Modeling. George Poole continues his active involvement with the ACCLAIM group; he has received several NSF/ACCLAIM sub-awards to work with teachers and students in Elizabethton City Schools. ONGOING: We are currently negotiating with SW Virginia Schools to offer an evening masters’ program in Mathematics Education. Jeff, George, Janice and Rick have submitted another $150,000 ITQ proposal to “immerse” area teachers in Math over the next summer. We will be submitting a $5,000,000 NSF-MSP proposal in December 2003 together with Middle Tennessee State University and other Tennessee Board of Regents universities.

Name Change: We hope soon to change our name to the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, to more accurately reflect our diverse mathematical/statistical/educational identity, as revealed, for example, through this newsletter.

New Faculty: Abdul Jarrah joined us in 2002 from New Mexico State University. A computational algebraist, Abdul has already established solid research connections with his colleagues at Virginia Tech. Susan Hosler joined us, also in 2002, as a lecturer in charge of Quality Improvement, particularly in the area of student learning in MATH 1530. We hope to hire two new faculty members during the 2003-04 year.

Promotions: Congratulations to Edith Seier, Jeff Knisley and Bob Price on attaining the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Congratulations to Jay Boland, Bob Gardner and Don Hong on becoming Full Professors. Thanks to Teresa Haynes, Linda Lawson and George Poole for creating new departmental promotion and tenure criteria.

The Research continues unabated: Despite the myriad things our faculty members have been involved in, we have the strongest research record among all departments in the college!!!

REU News: Senior Jennifer Salyer participated in the James Madison University REU program during the summer of 2003.

SIAM/SEAS: The Southeast and Atlantic Section of SIAM will hold its regional conference at ETSU in April 2004. Hats off to Debra Knisley, George Poole and Abdul Jarrah for their hard work in making this event happen.

Sonya Kovalevsky Math Days: Edith Seier, Debbie Knisley and Janice Huang received an AWM grant to host Sonya Kovalevsky Math Days to spark and maintain an interest in mathematics among area middle and high school girls. This event was held in summer 2001.

Southeast Regional AMS Meeting: Thanks to the great proposal written by Bob Gardner and Don Hong, ETSU will host the Regional Southeastern AMS Meeting in October 2005!! This is quite an honor for us!

The Stat Cave, our laboratory to radically change the teaching of MATH 1530 (Probability and Statistics), was launched in 2002, thanks to an NSF grant in the amount of $125,000 (matched by ETSU funds, primarily TAF monies) awarded to Jeff Knisley, Edith Seier, and Bob Price. This is a true feather in our hats. Course coordinator Tod Jablonski has taken on the task of aiding in the transition associated with our adopting a new textbook for this class. Edith Seier and Bob Price have been instrumental in bringing our faculty and graduate students up to speed with the radically new pedagogies we now feature in this most beloved of ETSU classes.

The Strong Perfect Graph Conjecture was proved at ETSU during the NSF-CBMS conference on Structure and Decomposition of Graphs organized by Debbie Knisley and Anant. Georgia Tech’s Robin Thomas gave 10 keynote talks, and the line up of speakers that were attracted to the conference in May 2002 was truly remarkable. See http://www.etsu.edu/math/cbms/ for more details

Teresa Turns 100: Teresa Haynes recently submitted her 100^th research paper! What an accomplishment!

Vanderbilt Sabbatical and other Don News: Don Hong spent the 2001-02 year on sabbatical in the Mathematics Department at Vanderbilt University. He returned last summer to work on projects in the Bio-Statistics Department at Vandy. He has also edited several volumes of papers in approximation theory, wavelets and splines over the last few years.

To conclude, it is not too often that one sees a Department of Mathematics that is so efficient in providing so many services and programs to the university, the community and the profession. We hope to continue to be a model department in the College of Arts and Sciences and at ETSU.

Learn about the REU program in our department. Do return for a virtual (or real) visit whenever you get a chance! Feel free to contact me by telephone (423-429-5359) or by e-mail (godbolea@mail.etsu.edu) if I can help in any way.

HONORS

Ree’l Street was honored at the spring 2002 University Honors Banquet as the graduating senior math major with the highest QPA in mathematics. During the spring 2002 Mathematics Honors Banquet, Lora Hart and Jamie Howard were the recipients of the Mathematics Award.

Jacob Benfield was honored at the spring 2003 University Honors Banquet as the graduating senior math major with the highest QPA in mathematics. During the spring 2003 Mathematics Honors Banquet, Aaron Gourley was the recipient of the Mathematics Award.

SCHOLARSHIP INFORMATION

During the fall of 2002 and 2003, the following mathematics scholarships were awarded.

During fall 2002, the recipients of the Faber-Neal scholarships were John Hicks, Sarah Holman, Amanda Sutter, Hillary Scheffler, and Rachel Baker-Horn. Recipients of the Charles Wilkey Scholarships were Jo Johnson, Ty Slatton, Jack Peterson, Josh Deyton, Katherine Williams, Beverly LaForce, and Gabriel Zimmer. Ed Stanley Scholarship recipients were Patricia Carey, Dayla Pike, and Michael Polson. Aaron Gourley was the recipient of the Wilson-Hartsell Scholarship. Jennifer Salyer was the recipient of the Jeff Hightower Scholarship. Jacob Benfield was awarded the Rex Depew scholarship.

During fall 2003, the recipients of the Faber-Neal scholarships were Patricia Carey, John Hicks, Sarah Holman, Bethany Jablonski, and Amanda Sutter. The Charles Wilkey Scholarship recipient was Hillary Scheffler. Ed Stanley Scholarship recipients were Larissa Holtsclaw and Rachel Baker-Horn. Josh Deyton received Wilson-Hartsell and Jeff Hightower Scholarships.

FACULTY PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Dr. Robert Gardner

R. Gardner, “Restrictions on the Zeros of a Polynomial as a Consequence of Conditions on the Coefficients of Even and Odd Powers of the Variable,” with our former graduate student Jiansheng Cao, in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 155(1) (2003) 153-162.

R. Gardner, “Some Generalizations of the Enestrom-Kakeya Theorem,” with former graduate student Atif Abueida (now at the University of Dayton), in Some Recent Advances in the Theory of Polynomials and their Applications.

R. Gardner and R. M. Price, “Translation Invariance and Finite Additivity in a Probability Measure on the Natural Numbers,” in International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, 29(10) (2002) 585-589.

Dr. Robert Price

R. M. Price and D.G. Bonett, (2003), “An Improved Confidence Interval for a Linear Function of Binomial Proportions,” To appear in Computational Statistics & Data Analysis.

D.G. Bonett, D.G. and R.M. Price, (2002), “Statistical Inference for a Linear Function of Medians: Confidence Intervals, Hypothesis Testing and Sample Size Requirements.” Psychological Methods, Vol. 7, No. 3, 370-383.

R. M. Price and D.G. Bonett, (2002), “Distribution-Free Confidence Intervals for Difference and Ratio of Medians.” Journal of Statistical Computation & Simulation, Vol. 72, No. 2, 119-124.

Dr. Anant Godbole

A. Godbole and B. Wieland, “On the domination number of a random graph,” Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 8, Paper R37, 13 pages, 2001

A. Godbole and Jacob Benfield (ETSU student), “Euler’s formula and random geometric graphs,” The Mathematical Scientist 27, 8-15,

A. Godbole, Dan Ramras and Sam Greenberg, “Cliques and independent neighbor sets in random graphs,” Congressus Numerantium 153, 113-128, 2001.

A. Godbole, ”Cooperative learning through undergraduate research,” in Cooperative Learning in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (CLUME), N. Erfan and V. Perera, eds., Karunaratne and Sons, Ltd., pp. 89-101.

A. Godbole, Adam Wierman, Julia Salzman, and Michael Jablonski, “An improved upper bound for the pebbling threshold of the n-path,” to appear in Discrete Mathematics.

A. Godbole and Melody Chan, “Improved Pebbling Bounds,” submitted to Discrete Mathematics.

A. Godbole and Joseph Johnson (ETSU student), “Even 2 X 2 Submatrices of a Random Zero-One Matrix,” submitted to Graphs and Combinatorics.

A. Godbole, Debra Knisley, and Rick Norwood, “Some properties of alphabet overlap graphs”, submitted to Discrete Applied Mathematics.

Dr. Don Hong

“Proceedings of Wavelets and Approximation Theory,” editor: Don Hong and Michael Prophet (professor at University of Northern Iowa), A Special Issue of Journal of Computational Analysis and Applications, Volume 5, No. 1, January 2003.

Hao Gu (graduate student of CS), Don Hong, and M. Barrett (professor of CS at ETSU), “On Image Compression,” Journal of Computational Analysis and Applications 5 (2003), 45-75.

Bradley Dyer (assistant professor at Hazard Community College, Ky.) and Don Hong, “An algorithm for optimal triangulations on C¹ quartic spline approximation and MatLab implementation,” J. of Computational Analysis and Applications 5(2003), 25-43.

“Proceedings of Wavelets and Numerical Analysis,” editor: D. Hong and Tianxiao He (professor of mathematics at Illinois Wesleyan University), A Special Issue of Journal of Computational Mathematics and Applications 155 (2003).

Huanwen Liu and Don Hong, “An explicit representation of a local basis in C¹ cubic spline space over a triangulated quadrangulation,” Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 155 (2003), 187-200.

Doug Hardin and Don Hong,” On Piecewise Linear Wavelets and Prewavelets over Triangulations,” Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 155 (2003), 91-109.

H.W. Liu and D. Hong, “Bivariate C¹ cubic splines spaces over even stratified triangulations,” J. of Computational Analysis and Applications, 4:1 (2002), 19-35.

Lutai Guan, D. Hong, and Aidi Wu, “On smoothness and convergence of orthogonal multiwavelets,” Journal of Engineering Mathematics, 18:2 (2001), 1-11.

Don Hong and Larry L. Schumaker, “Surface Compression Using a Basis of C¹ Cubic Bivariate Spline Spaces, manuscript, 2002,” Journal of Computing, to appear.

Jiansheng Cao and Don Hong, “Best approximation for symmetric semi-definite positive solutions of the left and right inverse problems on a subspace”, Journal of Concrete and Applicable Mathematics, to appear.

Don Hong, Martin Barrett, and Panrong Xiao, “Biorthogonal Spline Wavelets and EZW Coding for Image Compression,” Proceedings on 2002 International Conference on Robotic Welding, Intelligence and Automation, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, to appear.

Don Hong and Yu Shyr, “Wavelets and Statistical Applications,” a special issue in the Journal of Concrete and Applicable Mathematics, to appear.

Dr. Hong was sponsored by Ingram Cancer Research Center at Vanderbilt Medical School. He worked as a Visiting Research Professor in the summer of 2003 on a research project on “Wavelets and Applications in Biostatistics at the Department of Preventive Medicine,” Vanderbilt Medical School.

Dr. Abdul Jarrah

A. Jarrah, “Integral closures of Cohen-Macaulay Monomial Ideals,” Communications in Algebra, Vol. 30, No. 11, 5473-5478, 2002.

A. Jarrah, “The Sibirsky component of the center variety of polynomial differential systems (with R. Laubenbacher, and V. Romanovisky),” Journal of Symbolic Computation, Vol. 35, No. 5, 577-589, 2002.

A. Jarrah, “The cyclicity problem for two-dimensional polynomial systems (with R. Laubenbacher, and V. Romanovisky),” Nonlinear Dynamical Systems, Issue 4, G. Leonov (Editor), St. Petersburg University Press, 2002.

Drs. Teresa Haynes and Debra Knisley

Wayne Goddard, T. Haynes and D. Knisley, “Hereditary Domination & Independence Parameters,” to appear in Discussiones Mathematicae, Graph Theory.

T. Haynes, S. Hedetniemi, M. Henning and D. Knisley, “Total Irredundance in graphs,” by O. Favaron, Discrete Math., 256 (1-2): 115-127, 2002.

T. Haynes, S. Hedetniemi, and L. C. van der Merwe, “Total domination subdivision numbers,” JCMCC 44(2003) 115-128.

T. Haynes, Sandra Hedetniemi, Stephen Hedetniemi, Michael Henning, “Domination in Graphs Applied to Electric Power Networks,” SIAM J. Discrete Math Vol 15, No 4, 519-529.
T. Haynes and M. Henning, “Trees with equal domination and tree-free domination numbers,” Discrete Mathematics 242 (2002) 93-102.

T. Haynes and M. Henning, “A characterization of i-excellent trees,” Discrete Mathematics 248 (2002) 69-77.

T. Haynes, M. Henning, and Lucas C. van der Merwe, “Total domination supercritical graphs with respect to relative complements,” Discrete Mathematics 258 (2002) 361-371.

T. Haynes, Hedetniemi, M. Henning, and P. Slater, “H-forming sets in graphs,” Discrete Mathematics, 262 (2003) 159-169.

T. Haynes and M. Henning, “Total domination good vertices in graphs,” Australasian Journal of Combinatorics 26 (2002) 305-315.

T. Haynes and M. Henning, “Trees with Unique Minimum Total Dominating Sets,” Discussiones Mathematicae Graph Theory 22 (2002) 233-246.

Dr. George Poole, Dr. Rick Norwood, and Michael Marks.

G. Poole and R. Norwood, “An improved upper bound for Leo Moser’s Worm Problem,” with Rick Norwood in the Journal of Discrete and Computational Geometry (2003).

G. Poole, R. Norwood, and Michael Marks, “The number of 2x2 Odd submatrices of a (0,1)-matrix,” Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra and its Applications (to appear).

G. Poole, Joe Johnson (ETSU undergraduate now at Clemson) and Jack Wetzel, “University of Illinois Small convex cover for unit arcs,” in the Journal of Discrete and Computational Geometry (to appear).

Dr. Edith Seier

E. Seier (2002) “Comparison of Tests of Univariate Normality,” Interstat, January 2002.

E. Seier and C. Robe (2002), “Ducks and Green – An Introduction to the Ideas of Hypothesis Testing.” Teaching Statistics Vol 24, Num 3, 82-86 (This paper received the C. Oswald George prize for being the best paper published in 2002 in the journal.)

E. Seier, D. Moore and K. Joplin (2002), “Exploratory Tools for Comparison of Activity Time Series,” 2002 Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Biometrics Section [CD-ROM], Alexandria, Va: American Statistical Association.

D. G. Bonett and E. Seier (2002), “A test of Kurtosis with High Uniform Power,” Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Vol 40, 435-445.

D. G. Bonett and E. Seier (2003), “Statistical Inference for a Ratio of Dispersions Using Paired Samples,” Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics.” Spring 2003/Vol 28 1.

E. Seier and D. G. Bonett (2003), “Two Families of Kurtosis Measures.” Metrika 58, 1, 59-70.

Dr. Robert Davidson, Daryl Stephens, and Jamie McGill presented “Creative Graphing Techniques,” at the MAA conference in September 2002 and at the TNADE conference in October 2003.

SUMMER WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS

In A Report to the Nation from The National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21^st Century, which predated the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by President George W. Bush, the first goal outlined is to "Establish an ongoing system to improve the quality of mathematics and science teaching in grades K-12." The Department of Mathematics at East Tennessee State University has responded to that imperative in a number of ways. In particular, in the fall of 2002, Dr. Janice Huang and Dr. Jeff Knisley were awarded a grant in the amount of $54,246 from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and the U.S. Department of Education under the auspices of the Improving Teacher Quality Grant Program. They used the grant award to enhance the mathematical knowledge of K-8 teachers in northeast Tennessee by providing two week-long workshops in June of 2003, each of which served 20 participants – for a total of forty K-8 teachers. The first workshop developed the concepts and ideas of probability and statistics. It emphasized applications to the classroom throughout, providing a rich resource of activities and projects from which teachers can draw ideas for implementation. The second workshop concentrated on "mathematical modeling" which incorporates a variety of mathematical topics including geometry and measurement, topics which have been identified in several school system “improvement plans” as being areas which need improvement. In this workshop as well, the emphasis was on implementation in the K-8 classroom and on content development. The two workshops were based on a re-structuring of the material in two college-level courses developed by Dr. Edith Seier and Dr. Debra Knisley for Unicoi County teachers under a Kellogg Grant of $46,000.

GRANTS

Beginning in the spring of 2003, the department began teaching our elementary statistics course Math 1530 in an NSF-funded statistics laboratory (NSF-DUE 0126682). The NSF grant was $250,000. Since our elementary statistics course is also our general education course, more than 1,000 students each semester are being taught elementary statistics using Minitab and other software tools.

Dr. Edith Seier developed and hosted a one-day workshop called ARCOTS (Appalachian Regional Conference on the Teaching of Statistics) to share with and learn from others who are doing similar things with their statistics courses.

The Mathematics department received a $100,000 supplement to the NSF-funded statistics grant to fund multi-stage experiences in mathematical biology, culminating with two summers of Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) style internships for mathematics and biology students. Dr. Anant Godbole also received a REU-RET supplement for summer 2003 of $12,500 where RET describes Research Experiences for Teachers.

Dr. Debbie Knisley received a $27,000 grant for the May 2002 NSF-CBMS conference as was mentioned in the message from the chair.

Thus, in addition to the summer REU directed by Dr. Anant Godbole, there will also be four teams of two undergraduate researchers, a biologist, a mathematician and possibly others working collaboratively on a problem of interest in the interface of mathematics and biology.

Dr. George Poole received two grants.

A $3000 AASCU (American Association of State Colleges and Universities) grant for K-12 Professional Development.

A five-year ACCLAIM (Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics) grant ($8000 each year) to work with middle school teachers at TA Dugger Junior High in Elizabethton.

ACTUARIAL PROGRAM

In 2002, there were two actuarial presentations. The first one was given by Mr. Paul Sarnoff, FSA, former Vice President of Prudential about The Valuation of Life Insurance Reserves on February 3, 2003.

The second one was a joint presentation given by our actuarial alumni, Anna Mu (Nationwide Insurance), Renee Ferguson (Social Security Administration), Andrew Sell (UnumProvident Corporation), and Rusty Mawk (Merastar Insurance Company) about Actuarial Careers on February 28, 2003.

Congratulations to our actuarial students/alumni who recently passed SOA/CAS exams in November 2002:

Xiaoyu Mu passed SOA course-1 exam.

Gena Boercker, Renee Ferguson, and Mu Xiong passed SOA Course-2 exam.

Anna Mu passed CAS course-9 exam.

The Actuarial Student Association (ASA) at ETSU has activities including actuarial career seminars, group studies for actuarial exams, etc. The current president of ASA-ETSU is Xingchen Yuan, zxyy7@imail.etsu.edu.

For more details about the ETSU actuarial program, visit our website: www.etsu.edu/math/actuary.