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As part of OSU’s land grant mission, departments across the university work to demonstrate to the community the importance and beauty of their subject areas. Thanks to funding from the Stuart and Jennie Reeves Mathematics Education Endowment Fund, the Department of Mathematics has been able to help Pre-K through high school students statewide compete in math contests and have enriching mathematical experiences that would not otherwise have been possible.                                                                                                                  

OSU has run a high school math contest since 1991, but Associate Professor Jeff Mermin has given the event new life with changes he made recently. Students still come to campus by the busload to take part in an individual contest, but now in addition to an optional team contest in the afternoon, students can attend public math lectures given by OSU faculty and talk with OSU Math Club students who discuss solutions to the problems from the individual round. Around 250 students competed in Fall 2018, most of them on the Stillwater campus but some remotely as well, taking part in Kansas, Texas, and Alabama.

Why change the format? Mermin noticed that the contest was not having the optimal effect on students, particularly those who struggled with some of the more difficult problems. They did not have a good opportunity to interact with others or see new mathematics. “I realized that the best way to showcase the existence of an interesting mathematical community was to show off OSU’s extremely talented mathematical community,” Mermin noted. “Our diversity of interests would also show off the wide range of interesting and accessible mathematics that students generally don’t see in the classroom.”

While the OSU High School Math day is an annual event, Teaching Assistant Professor Detelin Dosev works with Stillwater students throughout the academic year on mathematics arising in math competitions and in advanced settings. He hosts weekly meetings for students of a variety of different ages, preparing them for national competitions like the Mathematical Association of America’s American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) and the international Mathematical Kangaroo contest. Dosev holds a math club at OSU every Friday primarily for students in grades 8 through 10. “Part of this is preparation for AMC 10 [one of the AMC age-group competitions], and the other part is to cover topics related to high school math and demonstrate how it can be actually useful,” Dosev said.

When he was a graduate student at Cornell University, Associate Professor Jay Schweig helped with a seminar in which Cornell graduate students worked with Ithaca High School students interested in mathematics enrichment activities. He wanted to do something similar at OSU, so in 2014, he started the Stillwater High School Math Seminar. About once a month, Schweig or another OSU math faculty member spends the lunch hour at Stillwater High School, presenting some mathematical ideas outside the normal high school curriculum and having students work on mathematical activities. The topics range from fractals to connections between math and music, and the Department provides lunch for the students.

The seminar has grown significantly since its inception, regularly attracting over 30 students, and it has been a great recruiting tool for OSU. Many of the seminar participants have gone on to be STEM majors at OSU, including 2018 alumnus and Goldwater Scholar Nick Nelsen.

Schweig loves the interactive environment and the enthusiasm the students show. “They like how much variation there is,” he observed. “They see totally different topics taught by a variety of people.” He said that the students get excited about the ability to discuss mathematics, not just listen to someone lecture. “They’re not intimidated even though they have a college professor talking to them. They’re not afraid to make guesses even if they might be wrong, and they’ll ask if they don’t understand something.”

For Cynthia Francisco, who started as a Teaching Assistant Professor in Fall 2018, working with students in the public schools is a natural fit. Francisco was hired to redesign and coordinate the math content courses for preservice elementary school teachers, so being able to work with kids on math was especially important. She has done two different types of outreach, volunteering as a tutor at Westwood Elementary School twice a week and organizing tables of activities for kids at events like the Oklahoma State Science and Engineering Fair and the Boren Mentoring Initiative’s Oklahoma Mentor Day.

Outreach has become an important part of Francisco’s job. “When I first started teaching these classes, I began volunteering at Westwood to gain a greater understanding of the reality of elementary school teaching so that I could better prepare future teachers in my classes,” Francisco recalled. “Working with the elementary students has been personally rewarding as I've see their growth over the year, and my experiences there have made an enormous impact on my OSU teaching, helping my students see the relevance of what we are learning to their future careers.” Francisco is currently developing a new program to bring honors preservice teachers into local schools to tutor, helping them get hands-on practice in analyzing students’ mathematical thinking at a deep level, integrating what they learn in their classes while supporting elementary students and teachers.

Both Dosev and Francisco have earned Community Engagement Grants from the College of Arts and Sciences to fund some of their activities, demonstrating the impact that these programs have had on the community.

“Our outreach efforts have increased dramatically in the last several years because of the efforts of our faculty members who recognize the importance of connecting with our community,” Department Head Chris Francisco said. “The Stuart and Jennie Reeves Mathematics Education Endowment Fund helps enormously. It is very unusual for a math department to have an endowment to use for outreach, and we are grateful to have this resource. We are able to fund these activities that have such a great impact, giving students of all ages a chance to appreciate mathematics in ways they might not otherwise get.”

The OSU Department of Mathematics has led the way in the reform of college-level mathematics instruction in recent years, and these efforts received a significant boost with a new five-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Faculty members William “Bus” Jaco, John Paul Cook, Allison Dorko, Michael Oehrtman, and Michael Tallman earned the funding for the Mathematical Inquiry Project (MIP), which aims to improve and standardize instruction in gateway college-level math courses throughout Oklahoma.

The five-year project will continue the work of the Mathematics Success Group, a task force of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE) designed to address a broad range of issues in college-level mathematics instruction. The task force set the groundwork for the MIP by encouraging the implementation of math pathways and corequisite instruction. Math pathways are different types of entry-level mathematics courses, each designed to focus more specifically on students’ degree plans and career interests rather than sending everyone into the more mathematically formal College Algebra course that STEM students take. For example, OSU’s Mathematical Functions and Their Uses course, designed by OSU faculty members Bruce Crauder, Benny Evans, and Alan Noell, is the basis for the state’s Modeling pathway, a course that teaches students at an introductory level about creating and using mathematical models. This class has served well as a prerequisite for Business Calculus and for disciplinary statistics courses in the social sciences, maintaining mathematical rigor while offering students a clear picture of how math is used in their areas of interest. 

Corequisite instruction is a model for getting students out of remedial instruction and into college-level classes faster. National data suggest that students who start in remedial math classes in college have only a 20% chance of succeeding in a college-level class within two years. Instead of having most underprepared students in remedial courses, OSU began corequisite instruction in 2015, allowing many students to take college-level classes with extra support right away. The results have been astonishing: over 70% of OSU corequisite students have earned a C or better in a college-level math class in a single semester. 

The MIP will support each of these OSRHE efforts by bringing teams from across the state together to work on objectives for gateway math courses and active-learning course modules for these classes. This will ensure more uniform instruction throughout the state, facilitating smooth transfers for students from one Oklahoma institution to another. It will also assist instructors at each of the public colleges and universities in the state by providing them with sets of classroom materials that are based on peer-reviewed research in mathematics education.

Efforts kicked off in the summer of 2019 with a series of workshops on the academic skills needed to succeed in college-level math and on the specific gateway courses the grant addresses, which start at the entry level and go through Calculus I. At the same time, OSU is working with the University of Oklahoma and OSRHE to maximize the alignment of math requirements in common degree programs.

For more details, see page 72 of the Winter 2018 STATE Magazine.

Ardoth Hassler came to OSU intending to become a high school math teacher. She left in 1972 with a degree in mathematics, as many courses in computer science as she could take, and the background she needed to start an outstanding career of over 45 years in academic computing. In recognition of her many accomplishments, the College of Arts and Sciences honored Hassler as one of two inductees in the CAS Hall of Fame class of 2019.

After leaving OSU, Hassler earned a master’s degree in biostatistics from the OU Health Sciences Center, and she began her career as a scientific programmer. In 1979, she went to Catholic University to serve as their head of computing, spending 16 years there before moving to Georgetown University in 1995. At Georgetown, Hassler wore many hats, working on IT policy issues in higher education, heading Institutional Research, and providing computing support for research. Hassler rose through the ranks at Georgetown and retired as Associate Vice President for University Information Services. Near the end of her time at Georgetown, Hassler was on loan to the National Science Foundation as Senior IT Advisor, providing guidance to large national research labs on cybersecurity issues. She is known especially for her vision in recognizing the need to support basic research as part of the IT mission in higher education and implementing policies and infrastructure to provide vital tools for researchers.

Hassler credits the mentoring of long-time OSU faculty member Jeanne Agnew and the classes she took while at OSU. “My OSU education fostered a 45-year career in IT and higher education. The technical foundation I had in math and computer science at OSU launched me on that path,” Hassler said in her induction speech. “I was fortunate to meet Jeanne Agnew… She was teacher, advisor, mentor, and friend, and we stayed in touch until her death.”

“Ardoth Hassler is a perfect example of what it means to be an outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences,” Department Head Chris Francisco said. “When she graduated from OSU, she had a great background in math and computer science. But in a field like computing, everything is continually changing. She had to adapt to a new environment all the time, and no one could possibly have envisioned what the technology would be like 10, 20, or 40 years down the road. To be called upon by the National Science Foundation 40 years after graduating to provide advice to the leading large research facilities in the world about cybersecurity is incredibly impressive.”

Hassler commented on the value of an Arts and Sciences education during the Hall of Fame banquet. “It wasn’t just math and CS; it was the well-rounded liberal arts education that I got at OSU. It enabled me to become a “boundary bridger…” I worked from the classics to medicine to sciences and the arts. I was most proud as an undergraduate of being selected for Mortar Board. The Mortar Board tenets of scholarship, leadership, and service, I learned at OSU.”

As part of the Hall of Fame weekend, Hassler and her husband, Jim Short, an engineer who also had a distinguished career in government and academia, visited the math department before the banquet, and Hassler gave that week’s colloquium. She talked about how her background in math helped in her career in academic computing and spoke of the value of mentoring and the need to encourage members of groups underrepresented in the mathematical sciences.

“We are so pleased to have been able to honor Ardoth as our outstanding alumna and that the College of Arts and Sciences selected her as a Hall of Fame inductee,” Francisco said. “She has had such an incredible impact on academic computing, particularly in enabling breakthroughs in basic research in so many areas. It was fascinating to hear her talk to our students and faculty about how she was able to achieve all that she has, and she offered some great advice about mentoring and moving toward a more inclusive community in STEM and higher education.”

When Carolyn Rhodes Koslow first came to OSU as a student, she was majoring in microbiology, not mathematics. She took Dr. Jeanne Agnew’s honors class in calculus and analytic geometry in her first semester. Rather than enrolling in the second semester, Koslow began a required organic chemistry class instead. A few weeks into the semester, she realized she missed doing math and went back to take the second semester of Dr. Agnew’s course. Koslow remembered, “As I was graduating, she reminded me of our conversation that day. Turns out it had been as notable for her as it had been for me. She was a wonderful teacher, and her career in mathematics was very inspiring to me.”

After graduating from OSU, Koslow went to graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was a teaching assistant while earning her master’s degree. Like so many students, she cites the influence of Dr. John Jobe. “His dedication to teaching and to his students made a lasting mark,” Koslow reflected. “He instilled the value of good teaching, and his experience and advice were invaluable. I had never thought that I could be a teacher myself, but it turns out that teaching has been one of the largest and most enjoyable parts of my career.”

Carolyn and her husband John have pledged generously to undergraduate department scholarships and the department discretionary fund in their estate. But they wanted to do more and to be able to see some of the results that contributions to the department would generate. Working with former Department Head Bus Jaco and Craig Jackson of the OSU Foundation, the Koslows established the Koslow Undergraduate Math Research Experience Scholarship. The scholarship allows undergraduate students who are interested in pursuing mathematical research to apply for funding to carry out a project with a faculty mentor. The department selects the winner and provides some additional funding to the faculty mentor for costs and travel associated with the research. Students applying for the Koslow Scholarship have a wide variety of ideas for projects. Among those funded, the topics include algebraic combinatorics, research in undergraduate mathematics education, math and music, and Galois theory.

“I cannot begin to say how happy my husband and I are about the scholarship,” Koslow said. “We are thrilled that our scholarship is firmly established in the department. I am blown away by the level of research that our scholarship students have attained. Their mentoring professors send me emails throughout the year and give me progress reports. I love to hear all the details.”

Dr. Jay Schweig

Nikole Heon, the 2018-2019 Koslow Scholar, who worked with Dr. Jay Schweig, believes the project was a crucial part of her undergraduate activities at OSU. “Professors knew that I received Nikole Heonthe scholarship, so they would ask me about my project, which was a unique experience since I had the opportunity to share my work beyond just the professors involved with the project,” she said. “It also gave me some insight on what a real research project looks like, which helped persuade me to go to graduate school and hopefully pursue more projects in the future.” Heon begins the math graduate program at OSU in Fall 2019.

The 2019-2020 recipient of the Koslow Scholarship is Chapman Howard, who is majoring in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. Howard began work with Dr. Anand Patel in the 2018-2019 school year, learning the fundamentals of Galois theory and writing a senior honors thesis (as a junior). This year, Howard will work with Patel to study some special cases of big problems in Galois theory, such as the inverse Galois problem.

“The group of Koslow scholars is absolutely remarkable,” Department Head Chris Francisco commented. “They are an elite group of math majors who are notable not only for their mathematical abilities but also their diverse interests and abilities in multiple areas. We are very grateful to the Koslows for their support, which allows our students to have these outstanding research experiences and serves as a great recruiting tool for us. There are very few undergraduate research scholarships across the country specifically for math, and it really makes OSU stand out.”

                             2016-2017: Timothy Alland (currently a graduate student in Mathematics at Stony Brook); worked with Dr. Edward Richmond

                     2017-2018: Field Watts (currently a graduate student in Chemistry Education at the University of Michigan); worked with Dr. Lisa Mantini

2018-2019: Nikole Heon (currently a graduate student in Mathematics at OSU); worked with Dr. Jay Schweig

2019-2020: Chapman Howard; working with Dr. Anand Patel

For decades, students who were underprepared for college-level math classes took remedial coursework. The idea made sense: if they spend a semester or two doing prerequisite work, then students will be ready for the college-level classes. Unfortunately, the data demonstrate otherwise. National statistics show that fewer than 20% of students who start in remedial math classes complete a college-level math course within two years.

What is going wrong? Studies show that there are two major problems. First, even when students pass a remedial course, many do not enroll in the subsequent class, tired of the seemingly endless sequence of requirements, running out of funds, or any of myriad other reasons students do not complete degrees. Second, remedial coursework often does not prepare students adequately for college-level work. This is not entirely surprising; students who place into remedial classes did not understand or retain the prerequisite material the first time, so why should taking it again be the ideal approach?

Four years ago, the OSU Department of Mathematics began offering corequisite instruction, which helps solve both of these problems. In this model, students who would ordinarily take the Intermediate Algebra remedial course at a community college can instead take a college-level class right away with extra support. Students attend five days a week instead of three, and review of the prerequisite material occurs just when the students are ready to use it, making the connections to college-level material clearer. Since OSU implemented corequisite instruction in math, more than 70% of students have earned a C or better in a college-level math class in a single semester. This results in enormous cost savings for students and much faster progress toward a degree.

“The success of the corequisite program has been beyond our wildest expectations,” said Chris Francisco, Head of the Department of Mathematics. “Corequisite students are doing the same homework and taking the same exams as students in standard sections, just with a couple hours per week of additional support. Remarkably, despite being underprepared when they start the course, corequisite students are succeeding at the same rates as their peers in standard sections.”

OSU offers corequisite instruction in four math courses. Course coordinators Lee Ann Brown (Preparation for Calculus), Allison Dorko (Mathematical Functions), Rae Tree (College Algebra), and Michael Tallman (Calculus I) oversee the corequisite instruction and develop and revise the materials used in the extra support sessions; John Paul Cook and Rachael Wood developed the initial corequisite materials for Math Functions. Undergraduate students lead the extra sessions, acting as peer instructors and providing an additional point of contact for students.

To help with the growing demand for this successful model, OSU is building two new corequisite instruction classrooms on the first floor of the Mathematical Sciences Building. The classrooms will be ready for Spring 2020. Around 600 students will take corequisite courses each academic year, and the new classrooms are crucial for accommodating everyone.

“We are a land grant institution,” Francisco said, “and we take our responsibility to serve the state very seriously. The corequisite program has provided a great mechanism to help students that research institutions have traditionally left to fend for themselves. The students work hard and learn exactly what we want them to know by the end of the semester, and they are well prepared to move to higher-level classes.”

When Emily (Spalding) Sanders came to OSU as a freshman, she was a finance major, enrolled in Business Calculus in her first semester. After realizing how much she enjoyed the mathematics in Dr. Melissa Mills’s course, Sanders decided to switch gears and take Calculus I the following spring. Making that change was the first step in an impressive undergraduate career for Sanders, a 2018 alumna of the math department. She loved the challenging but welcoming environment in her math classes at OSU. “I felt like I really had the support of the whole math department,” Sanders recalled. “All of my professors wanted to see me succeed, and they really took time to help the whole class learn and understand.”

After graduating from OSU, Sanders went to work at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), first as an intern and then in a regular position as an analyst. At the APL, Sanders has the flexibility to work on projects that are interesting to her. “Lately, I have been doing a lot of geospatial analysis and modeling and simulation,” Sanders explained. “I have also been on several cyber projects doing social network analysis and building network graphs.” She has found that graph theory and combinatorics are particularly useful in her work.

Sanders likes that her work has a clear impact. “Since my projects usually have government sponsors, I also have a sense of pride in knowing that I’m making a difference to our nation,” she said.

While at OSU, Sanders had several jobs in the math department, and there are an increasing number of cocurricular employment opportunities available for students. “I remember hiring Emily as a grader on the recommendation of my graduate student, Ashwini Bhat, who had taught Emily in Calculus I and thought very highly of her,” Department Head Chris Francisco said. “She was so personable and talented that she became one of our first corequisite Learning Assistants, running class sessions to help students in lower-division classes who needed extra support. Even though we didn’t ask specifically about the Learning Assistants on our course evaluation forms, most of the students wrote comments about how critical she was to their success in the course. I was really impressed by that.”

That experience as a Learning Assistant stands out to Sanders, who has found that it benefits her in her research position at the APL. “I am so glad that I was also a Learning Assistant,” Sanders said. “The experience helped my presentation skills and taught me how to clearly communicate difficult concepts.”

Like most math alumni, Sanders also appreciates the skills that a math major obtains and their transferability to any profession. “The critical thinking skills that I developed through my studies in math have been invaluable,” she commented.

Sanders called her work “an amazing opportunity” and encouraged math students to apply for an internship, particularly at APL. “Emily is a terrific example of how the OSU math major prepares students for a wide variety of jobs,” Francisco said. “It’s been great to see how enthusiastic she is about her work and the meaningful impact she has had already.”

Nick Nelsen has a long association with the OSU math department. As a student at Stillwater High School, he was one of the first students to participate in Dr. Jay Schweig’s Stillwater High School Math Seminar, a monthly event in which OSU math faculty do activities with students over lunch. “I don’t think there was anything else like that academic enrichment at the high school at the time,” Nelsen said.

Even at this early stage, Nelsen made a lasting impression on Schweig. “He was really enthusiastic about the mathematics we did in the seminar and even worked on the problems we discussed outside of school as well,” Schweig remembered. Nelsen says he still has the Sharpie-covered torus the students used in the seminar in a session on topology and graph theory.

After graduating from Stillwater High, Nelsen came to OSU in 2014 and had a remarkable four years on campus, earning three degrees in Mathematics, Aerospace Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering as well as the General Honors Award and Undergraduate Research Scholar designation. While at OSU, Nelsen won the national Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, which is the most prestigious scholarship given to undergraduates in the sciences, generally focusing on research achievement and potential. Nelsen was a Niblack Research Scholar and was involved in a number of different projects as an undergraduate, including work with Dr. Henry Segerman and a senior honors thesis with Dr. Jiahong Wu. "Nick received just about every honor out there as an undergraduate, and it was well deserved," Department Head Chris Francisco said. "While I never had Nick in class, I had still heard all about how impressive he was very early on in his time at OSU."

As a result of his sterling academic record, Nelsen earned a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for doctoral study at Caltech, and he just finished his first year there. Nelsen is in the Mechanical Engineering program, working with Dr. Andrew Stuart, but Nelsen says his work is very mathematical, describing it as machine learning through the lens of dynamical systems. He is taking many applied mathematics courses, and Nelsen believes that the mathematical background he got at OSU helped set the stage for his work in graduate school. “The foundation from this department helped me the most, thinking from a proof mindset,” Nelsen said.

After he earns his doctorate, Nelsen would like to work at a national lab or in a position at university. He already has experience working in the Sandia National Laboratory as an undergraduate, which he enjoyed very much.

It is often difficult for math students who are talented in many areas and have diverse interests to decide where they want to focus their efforts. When asked for any advice he has for math majors, Nelsen suggested that students look into small research projects as a way to see what is most interesting to them. He echoed the mantra that many faculty members tell students: be curious, and be persistent. Nelsen is off to a great start in his career after OSU, and it will be exciting to follow his progress in the coming years.

Sue Reel graduated from OSU with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. She worked as a district manager at AT&T in engineering and in marketing and sales operations for many years before joining the OSU Foundation as a Senior Director of Regional Development. This award recognizes undergraduate students that have demonstrated a strong performance in their mathematics courses with special consideration given to students who have graduated from a high school in Oklahoma.