News

OK-LSAMP students attended the 2017 Field of Dreams Conference in St. Louis from November 3- November 5. The Field of Dreams Conference is put on by The National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences, to help attain the goal of "ensuring that every underrepresented or underserved American student with the talent and the ambition has the opportunity to earn a doctoral degree in a mathematical science."  Specifically, this conference brings together faculty, undergraduate student and graduate students to work together, sharing strategies for graduate success, tips on finding the best fit graduate program, advice on the graduate school application process, and discussing the positive and negatives of different career paths. 

This year's conference featured keynote speaker Dr. Garikai Campbell, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Morehouse College. In addition, Dr. Christine Darden, a retired NASA Mathematician, data analyst and aeronautical engineer, spoke and was a panelist on "Hidden Figures No More." 

Oklahoma State University is proud to be the lead institution of The Oklahoma Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (OK-LSAMP). Department of Mathematics Head, Dr. Jaco, attended the 2017 Field of Dreams Conference to represent OK-LSAMP and show Oklahoma State University's commitment to helping all students to Connect, Achieve and Succeed. 

 

On Friday, September 22, The College of Arts and Sciences recognized Hall of Fame honorees, Rising Stars and Distinguished Alumni. Among the twenty-one Distinguished Alumni recognized was Dr. John Rice, the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Purdue University.  Dr. Rice earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in Mathematics from OSU in 1954 and 1956 before receiving his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. During his time as an undergraduate in the OSU Math Department, Dr. Rice published "Electronic Brains"; a work that demonstrates his progression towards the computer sciences. In 1964, Dr. Rice joined the faculty at Purdue University as Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. From 1983-1996 he served as the Department Head of the Computer Sciences Department.

Dr. Rice is founder of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software and is on several other editorial boards. He is the past chair of the Computing Research Association, a fellow of the AAAS and the ACM and he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Rice has published 30 books including Solving Elliptic Problems with ELLPACK (1985), Mathematical Aspects of Scientific Software (1988), Expert Systems for Scientific Computing (North Holland, 1992) and Enabling Technologies for Computational Science (Kluwer, 2000). He has published over 300 journal articles and has 6 patents in computer security. Dr. Rice was honored as the Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1974 and the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor from 1989-2004.

The Department of Mathematics at Oklahoma State University is happy to join the College of Arts and Sciences in recognizing Dr. Rice's contribution to the fields of mathematics and computer science.