Math majors present, win awards at MAA Texas Section Meeting and ASA DataFest

Four math majors presented at the 2021 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Texas Section Meeting on April 9 hosted by Collin College, and two earned best presentation awards for their sessions:

  • Stella Cunningham: “Counting Constellations in Tarot Card Readings” (mentored by Dr. Jason Callahan)
  • Taylor Huey: “Unfolding Platonic Solids” (mentored by Dr. Casey Sherman) earned best presentation award for the Algebra, Number Theory, Discrete Math session
  • Laufey Jörgensdóttir: “Component-Preserving Amphicheiral Links” (mentored by Dr. Jason Callahan) earned best presentation award for the Education, Art and History, Geometry session
  • Nicholas Phan: “The Tale of Mickey The Tricky Mouse” (mentored by Dr. Michael Saclolo)

Math majors Stella Cunningham, Taylor Huey, Ruvi Jamies, and Katalina Rubio also participated in the 2021 American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest April 9-11 hosted by Southern Methodist University. Their team received recognition for Best Visualization and placed 2nd overall out of 17 teams!

Congratulations to all our students for participating and presenting their research as well as for representing St. Edward’s University so well — we’re very proud of you!

 

DataFest Team:

Senior Seminar Spring 2021

Congratulations to our six math majors who presented the results of their four semesters of math research at our Spring 2021 Mathematics Senior Seminar on March 5:

  • Stella Cunningham – “Counting Constellations in Tarot Card Readings”
  • Stephanie Lao – “Predictive modeling of the occurrence of deep sea corals in Davidson Seamount using supervised learning”
  • Edith Magaña – “Achieving Convexity in Neural Codes”
  • Nick Phan – “The Tale of Mickey The Tricky Mouse”
  • Joseph Minh Van – “Stacks in Parallel”
  • Taylor Huey – “Unfolding Platonic Solids”

Congrats again — we’re so proud and excited for all the wonderful things you all will do!

Math major earns outstanding poster award honorable mention at Joint Mathematics Meetings

Stella Cunningham ’21 earned honorable mention for an outstanding poster award at the 2021 Joint Mathematics Meetings, the largest annual mathematics conference in the world, where she presented research on combinatorics in Tarot conducted with Dr. Jason Callahan with the support of a 2020 Dr. M. Jean McKemie and Suzanne Mason Endowed Student/Faculty Fund for Innovative Mathematics Summer Scholarship. Congratulations to Stella on this honor and for taking the opportunity to present her research, and here’s her poster!

Teaching Awards for Two St. Edward’s Math Faculty

Monica Cicciarelli was selected for the University’s 2019-2020 Outstanding Teaching Award for her thoughtful and pedagogically rich teaching materials and her engaging work in the classroom. This prestigious award involves a rigorous and extensive selection process; in a university filled with intelligent, dedicated, and engaged faculty, St. Edward’s recognizes Ms. Cicciarelli’s work as being exceptional. Congratulations, Monica!

Paul Savala, our newest math faculty member, was selected for the University’s 2019-2020 DeLayne Hudspeth Award for Innovative Instruction, for his teaching innovation in helping students develop critical understanding of statistics in a personally meaningful project. Dr. Savala’s open-ended project, “Show Me the Data” encourages students to apply the statistics techniques they’ve learned to a question and topic they care deeply about, bringing their authentic selves to a mathematics course.  Congratulations on this prestigious award, Paul!

Senior Seminar Spring 2020

Congratulations to our seven math majors who presented the results of their four semesters of math research at our Spring 2020 Mathematics Senior Seminar on February 28:

  • Adam Lamoureux – “Balancing the Coin Toss Advantage in the NFL”
  • Antonio Tapia – “Discrete Bidding in the Game of Connect $n$”
  • Karlee Bradley – “Permutation Pattern Containment”
  • Nathaniel Leech – “Planning a Shared Meal: Adding a Pinch of Thyme”
  • Rafael Montes – “The Valley Of Functions”
  • Samuel Johnson – “Dynamics of Paper Folding”
  • Sydney Mack – “Bounded Chomp”

Congrats again — we’re so proud and excited for all the wonderful things you all will do!

Link to an album of pictures

Math Majors present award-winning posters at the Joint Mathematics Meeting

Two math majors at St. Edward’s traveled to the Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) to present their research at the JMM Poster Session: Adrian Silva Jr. (graduated in Fall 2019) and Antonio Tapia (currently a senior).  The JMM 2020 was held January 15-18 in Denver, Colorado.

Both Antonio and Adrian received awards for their posters:

  • Antonio received an Outstanding Poster Award for his poster, “Discrete Bidding in the Game Connect n” (mentored by Dr. Kaitlyn Phillipson)
  • Adrian received an Honorable Mention for his poster, “Comets in the SET Universe” (mentored by Dr. Jason Callahan)

Antonio and Adrian both received support from the Dr. M. Jean McKemie Endowed Student/Faculty Fund for Innovative Mathematics Summer Scholarships, and Adrian also received support from NSF grant #1525490.

Congratulations to both Antonio and Adrian on their awards!

Math majors give Senior Seminar presentations

Congratulations to our six graduating math majors who presented the results of their four semesters of math research at our Fall 2019 Mathematics Senior Seminar on November 1:

  • Adrian Silva Jr, “Charting the SET Universe”
  • Alyxandria Garcia, “Counting Liars and Their Lies”
  • Austin Scully, “Cyclic Towers of Hanoi”
  • Jacob Spencer, “Examining Square Ratios of Triangular Numbers in Pascals Triangle”
  • Jennifer Garcia Villanueva, “Lattice Point Visibility for a Diamond Configuration”
  • Omar Dominguez, “Investigating Racial Gerrymandering”

Congrats again — we’re so proud and excited for all the wonderful things y’all will do!

TUMC 2019

This year TUMC was located at UT-Tyler in Tyler on October 25 and 26 Dr. Mitch chaperoned 9 students, 6 of whom gave talks. The talks were:

  • Nathaniel Leech – Planning a Shared Meal: Adding a Pinch of Thyme
  • Rafael Montes – Wonders of the Cos Graph
  • Luisa Asencio – Graph Splines and the Universal Difference Property
  • Sam Johnson – Paper Fold Dynamics
  • Adam Lamoureux – Balancing the Coin Toss Advantage in the NFL
  • Adrian Silva Jr. – Comets in the set Universe

An album of our students giving talks