LEHIGH MATH NEWS
Volume 3: April 1998
NOTE FROM THE CHAIR
The many alumni who have expressed to me their appreciation for
this newsletter makes the time spent writing it well worthwhile. This issue
contains a long section of Alumni News. I hope that alumni who have not
yet been featured will send me news for the next issue of this newsletter.
The year since the last Lehigh Math News has seen turmoil in
the LU administration, with a new Dean of A&S, Bobb Carson, a new Provost,
mathematician Nelson Markley, an interim president, Bill Hittinger, and
a wait for the selection of the next president.
The sudden death of Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Mathematics
Ed Assmus in March 1998 was probably the biggest news in the math department.
Both of our Assistant Professors, Garth Isaak and Terry Napier, were promoted
to Associate Professor, leaving the department completely tenured.
I try to keep the department’s web page current. For example,
all three issues of LMN are there at http://www.lehigh.edu/~math.
Don Davis
DEATH OF ED ASSMUS
The department and many friends were shocked to learn of the
death on March 18 of Edward F. Assmus, Jr., 66, emeritus distinguished
professor. He died while attending the Mathematisches Forschunginstitut
in Oberwolfach, Germany, apparently the victim of a sudden stroke.
Assmus joined the Lehigh faculty in 1966. He became Professor
in 1970, and Distinguished Professor in 1993. He retired in 1994, but remained
extremely active in mathematics. He received a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin
in 1953, and a PhD from Harvard in 1958. Before coming to Lehigh, Assmus
held positions with the Office of Naval Research, Columbia University,
and Wesleyan University.
Among his most important contributions to mathematics were his
work in the 1960s with H.F. Mattson on error-correcting codes, a new approach
to the problem of the projective plane of order 10 in the 1970s, and his
work in the 1980s with Jenny Key which resulted in the book "Designs and
their codes," (1992), volume 103 of Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics. He
published more than fifty papers, mostly in algebra and combinatorial theory.
Ed directed 11 Ph.D. theses at Lehigh, and even though retired,
he was preparing to direct another. He was an editor of the journals Designs,
Codes, and Cryptography and the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics.
He is survived by his wife Susan, daughter Alexi, of Princeton,
NJ, and son Richard of Ann Arbor, MI.
A memorial service was held at Lehigh on April 3. Speakers at the service
included Everett Pitcher, Murray Schechter, Cliff Queen, E.H. Mattson,
Susan Assmus, Jerry King, Don Davis, and Jay Wood.
The Edward Assmus, Jr., Memorial Fund has been established.
Gifts to the fund will be used to benefit mathematics
at Lehigh University. Checks for this fund should be made out to Lehigh
University and mailed, with a clear indication that they are for the Assmus
Memorial Fund, to Diane Snyder, Development Office, Alumni Building, Lehigh
University, Bethlehem, PA 18015.
NEW PROVOST
In August 1997, Nelson Markley became the new provost at Lehigh.
Nelson had previously served as Acting Provost
and as Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at the University
of Maryland, College Park.
Markley was welcomed by the faculty of our department as a new member
of the department. His area of research is dynamical systems. In October
1997, he gave a colloquium talk on "The role of cocyles in dynamical systems."
He has attended several other departmental colloquia, and hopes to teach
an occasional course once he is more accustomed to his administrative duties.
He brought an advanced graduate student, Mary Jacobsen, with him. She has
taught a calculus course each semester while working on her dissertation.
Markley received his B.A. degree from Lafayette College, and his Ph.D.
from Yale.
PROMOTIONS
Both Garth Isaak and Terry Napier were promoted to Associate
Professor with tenure this spring. All 23 of our faculty members are now
tenured. Both Garth and Terry joined our faculty in 1992.
Garth received a B.A. from Bethel College, KA, in 1984, with
majors in Mathematical Sciences, Physics, and Chemistry. His PhD in 1990
was interdisciplinary, from the Rutgers Center for Operations Research.
He has published 16 papers, primarily in combinatorics and graph theory.
Garth has developed a close relationship with faculty in Lehigh’s Departments
of
Computer Science and Industrial Engineering. He has also taken over
the advising of our team in the Putnam mathematics contest, a job which
has been performed for many years by Bennett Eisenberg.
Terry Napier received his B.S. from University of Notre Dame
in 1982, and Ph.D. from University of Chicago in 1989. He came to Lehigh
after three years as an instructor at M.I.T. He has published five long
papers in an area
encompassing several complex variables and differential geometry. He
had an N.S.F. research grant from 1994-6.
STUDENT AWARDS
This year both the Faculty Award for the outstanding junior math
major and the Thornburg Prize for the graduating
student with outstanding performance in advanced math courses were
won by the same person, Paul Biancaniello, from Media, PA. This occurred
because Paul is graduating in three years, thanks to advanced placement,
summer courses, and overloaded semesters. Next year Paul will have a President’s
Scholarship, a relatively new program that provides
a tuition-free year after graduation to a student who graduates with
a GPA exceeding 3.50. Paul will study toward
a second B.S. degree, this one in physics.
The winner of the Hsiung Award for outstanding scholarship by
a graduating student majoring in mathematics or statistics is Megan Fitzpatrick,
of Darien, CT. After graduation, she will work in the Philadelphia office
of a consulting office called Towers Perrin, training to be a pension actuary.
A regional award for undergraduate research was won by one of
our first-year graduate students, Mike Fraboni.
During 1996-7, Mike was a senior at University of Scranton, and wrote
a paper entitled "Conjugacy and the 3x+1 Conjecture," under the direction
of Professor Ken Monks, who received his PhD from our department in 1989.
Mike won the 1998 Student Paper Competition of the Eastern Pennsylvania
and Delaware region of the Mathematical Association of America.
It was the third straight year that this award was won by one of Monks’
students.
During Spring semester 1998, Monks is teaching two courses on
fractals at Yale University. These courses are
coordinated by Benoit Mandelbrot, but he always brings in other professors
to do the actual teaching. Discussions during Mandelbrot’s Pitcher Lectures
at Lehigh in March 1997 led to Monks’ invitation to teach at Yale.
In May 1997, Kuntal McElroy won the Arthur Humphrey Award for
the outstanding teaching assistant in the College of Arts and Sciences.
It was the sixth time in twelve years that the award has been won by a
mathematics graduate student. Kuntal is now working for Price Waterhouse
in New York.
SPECIAL EVENTS
The 1998 Everett Pitcher Lectures were delivered April 6, 7,
and 8, by Cathleen Morawetz, professor at NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical
Sciences. The title of her three talks was "The Wave Equation Revisited."
Morawetz served as president of the American Mathematical Society during
1995-7.
The eleventh annual Geometry-Topology Conference will be held
at Lehigh June 11-13, 1998. This conference is sponsored by the Journal
of Differential Geometry, which is published at Lehigh. The conference
is held at Harvard every third year. The principal speakers at the 1998
conference are Mark Goresky, Institute for Advanced Study, Chern classes
of modular varieties, Lisa Jeffrey, McGill Univ., Peter May, Univ of
Chicago, Stable algebraic topology and stable topological algebra,
Kent Orr, Indiana University, Knot concordance and iterated Whitney
towers, Peter Petersen,
UCLA, Geometry with integral curvature bounds, Frank Quinn,
VPI, Some numerical quantum group theory.
For more information, see our website, or contact David Johnson at
dlj0@lehigh.edu.
MASTERS IN STATISTICS
Beginning in Fall semester 1998, we have a new Masters program
in Statistics. Prior to this, graduate students studying statistics would
receive a degree in mathematics, with no official designation of their
specialization in statistics. Many courses in probability and statistics
will now be cross-listed between mathematics and statistics. The program
will have two tracks, the Statistics track and the Stochastic Modeling
track. In addition to traditional students, we hope that this program will
attract employees of local industries. For more information about this
program, see our web page or contact Wei-Min Huang at wh02@lehigh.edu.
In 1997-8, we instituted a new two-semester 400-level course
in Financial Calculus. The first semester covers the
basic mathematical concepts behind derivative pricing and portfolio
management of derivative securities.
It culminates in the Black-Sholes model and also deals with more advanced
topics on continuous-time martingales, Brownian motion and Ito calculus.
Among the topics in the second semester are interest rate market models,
multiple stock n-factor models, and quantitative methods for portfolio
management. Including auditors, the course had 17 participants during the
first semester and 5 during the second semester, more than half of whom
were from the business college. This course will provide one possible emphasis
in the Stochastic Modeling track of our new M.S. program. For more information,
contact Vladimir Dobric at vd00@l
ehigh.edu.
THIRD CAREER NIGHT
On March 9, 1998, we had our third Career Night. It followed
a format similar to the first two, with five alumni
joining 16 undergraduate math majors, two graduate students, and four
professors for dinner and discussion about careers. This time the event
was held in the tower of Iacocca Hall on the mountaintop. Several alumni
were appearing at their second Career Night, while others were making their
first appearance. Each had inspiring and helpful comments. Common themes
were the value of problem-solving skills, the importance of communication
skills, and the need to be flexible. The alumni who spoke were Bill Brichta,
’76, Lehigh University Information Resources, Art Brody, ’66, KPMG Peat
Marwick, Diane Duda, ’80, CIGNA Insurance, Bill Franklin M.S. ’73, U.S.
General Accounting Office, and Bruce Knoll, ’73, Fuller Co. Alumni who
might be interested in speaking at one of these events in the near future
should contact Don Davis at dmd1@
lehigh.edu.
FACULTY NEWS
Don Davis gave invited lectures at Johns Hopkins University, City University of New York, and annual meetings of both the Canadian Mathematic al Society (Victoria, B.C.) and American Mathematical Society (Baltimore) on his work on Periodic Homotopy Groups of Lie Groups.
Kumar Ghosh gave an invited lecture in December in India at the International Triennial Calcutta Symposium of Probability and Statistics.
Wei-Min Huang won the Lehigh University Faculty Advisor Award. This is awarded annually to the one faculty member selected by students as the best advisor in the university.
David Johnson spent two weeks in October lecturing on "Volumes of Foliations" in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His trip was funded by the Faculty of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Sao Paulo and several Brazilian science foundations.
Jerry King gave two lectures on "The Art of Mathematics" at the Conference for African American Research in Mathematical Sciences at Morgan State University in June. He also gave two invited addresses at regional meetings of the Mathematical Association of America.
George McCluskey, our one-person Division of Astronomy, continued progress on his book, "Introduction to the Theory of Relativistic Binary Stars," for Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Cliff Queen wrote two papers on the arithmetic of commutative monoids with David H. Johnson of NSA. This is the David Johnson who taught at Lehigh from 1978-1984, not to be confused with David L.Johnson, who came to Lehigh in 1984.
Murray Schechter’s paper "Integration over polyhedra: an application of the Fourier-Motzkin Elimination Method" appeared in the March 1998 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly. Papers published in this journal are, quite possibly, read by more mathematicians than those of any other journal.
Gil Stengle spent the academic year 1997-8 on sabbatical in Madrid, Spain, doing research on real algebraic geometry. Madrid is a center for research in this area of mathematics.
Joe Yukich gave a series of four lectures on "Probability Theory of Classical Euclidean Optimization Problems" in Guanajuato, Mexico, in March. The occasion was a symposium of Probability and Stochastic Processes funded by several Mexican universities and agencies.
ALUMNI NEWS
The following reports of activities of math alumni have sometimes been edited. This is the first time that alumni of our graduate program are included here, since our original inquiry and newsletter only went out to our under-graduate alumni. If you have not already sent us a bio, please do so, for inclusion in the 1999 edition.
Herb Snyder, MA ’51, PhD ’65
attended the 1989 50th anniversary celebration of
PhDs in mathematics at Lehigh. "After 23 years in the mathematics department
at Southern Illinois University, I retired in 1989. For a few semesters
thereafter, I was visiting professor in my home state, at West Virginia
University Institute of Technology. Since then, my wife Becky and I have
settled in the small town of Tappahannock VA.
"Since retirement, I have remained active in mathematics (e.g.,
publishing and giving invited talks). I am somewhat handicapped since Spring
1994 by (still a mild case of) Parkinson’s disease. I would like to resume
my researches in computer-aided analysis, but I haven’t been able to find
a PC with a 25" monitor."
Carleton Garrett, ’62
"I was originally in Arts/Engineering but switched to Math because
I liked the discipline and because it afforded me the time for electives
that I needed in order to be able to attend medical school. I attended
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 1962-66 then spent 2 years as a house
officer in Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Switched my training
program to Department of Pathology at the Univ. of Wisconsin in 1968 working
toward a PhD in biochemical oncology. After a few years fulfilling my military
commitment, I moved to the medical school at George Washington University,
where I became a Professor.
"Through 1985 I worked in experimental pathology focusing mainly
on cancer research. In 1985 a new area of molecular diagnostics was developing.
It encompasses efforts to translate work in molecular biology into clinical
testing. The common denominator for the test is that they use DNA or RNA
as the test analyte. We established our laboratory in this area at GWU
in 1987. In 1993 I moved to my present position as Medical Director of
the Division of Molecular Diagnostics at the Medical College of VA/Virginia
Commonwealth Univ.
"I have been interested to observe the diversity of professions
that graduates of the math program at Lehigh have entered. The experience
that I gained as a math major at Lehigh has been invaluable to me in working
with medical statistics particularly survival/hazard analysis. One of the
biggest challenges in medicine today is to be able to measure whether a
new test or procedure improves outcome. The task is complex, requiring
manipulation of large data bases but, more importantly, identifying measurable
parameters that can be both calculated and provide meaningful measurements
of outcome. It depends on MATH and just as the training that I received
at Lehigh 35 years ago helped me to reach this point in my career, it continues
to be essential for extending the journey."
Pat Dempsey, M.S. ’66
"I went to work for a company called Sylvania doing, initially,
some work in the Boolean Algebra arena that was a direct offshoot of what
I had studied at Lehigh. Then I got into programming—later ‘upgraded’ to
software engineering—and later communications applications for various
branches of the Defense Dept. What followed were:
project management, line management, product management, general management,
Director of Engineering and Vice-President of Engineering and Technology
positions. I left in 1993 on an early retirement program to take a few
months off and I am still enjoying the ‘few’ months."
He recalls many of his professors and classmates, with whom
he would like to be in touch. He particularly remembers winning a graduate
school tag rush football championship in which Fritz Hartmann caught a
Hail Mary pass which he threw. He calls it "one of the great catches of
all time."
Jeff Kunkel, ’66
Philip Guza, ’67
Dick Davitt, ’66, PhD ’69
Jerry Plante, ’68
Dick Lehman, ’68
Eric Fairfield, 69
Richard Newman, ’69
Dave Maher, ’72, PhD ’76
William Franklin, MS ’73
John Rochowicz, MS ’74
Mike Hurley, ’74
Tony Batory, ’76, MS ‘78
David Jablon, ’80
David Katz, ’80
Kevin Kauffman, ’81
Jeff Bonn, ’88
Marilyn Vricella, ’91
Ron Lanzo, ’94
Vera Kovtun, ’97
He is currently employed as a Supervisory Actuary with the Social
Security Administration. The work of his office can be viewed at
http://www.ssa.gov.OACT.
Steps along the way included a masters degree in math from University
of Maryland, teaching high school math, and then a masters degree in statistics
from Penn State.
"I attended Princeton graduate school, eventually receiving
PhD. I taught at Rutgers Newark until 1978. Did not receive tenure. "Worked
at Home Insurance Co. in New York, then joined Frank B. Hall & Co (insurance
brokerage) 1980. Been with them ever since, through a few reorganizations.
We are now part of Aon Corp. at World Trade Center, NYC.
"My math training has always served me well. I presently do
cash-flow analysis of insurance proposals, and insurance budgeting and
allocation for major clients. Lots of spreadsheet work."
"I have been teaching at the University of Louisville since
1970. My thesis director at Lehigh was Al Otto who left Lehigh for Illinois
State shortly after I left. Jerry King was my MS thesis director and the
instructor I have most modeled my teaching after.
"My research interests now lie in the history and philosophy
of mathematics and science. I have been the sole instructor in two HM courses
at U of L, one at the undergraduate level and the other at the strictly
graduate level.
"Recently I have begun teaching courses related to HM courses
overseas, primarily near London. The next offering of History of Mathematics—Bri
tish
Influences will be for a month in the summer of 1998. The courses are taught
under the aegis of the Cooperative Center for Study Abroad.
"I have won the College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Teaching
Award twice. In 1997 I was selected the Kentucky Section MAA’s college/universit
y
teacher of the year."
"My first ‘job’ after Lehigh was to be drafted into the Army
and sent to Vietnam as a medical corpsman. Upon returning, I got a Masters
degree in mathematics from the University of Connecticut.
"I have worked for Saab Cars USA since 1972. I am currently
manager for product compliance, which is primarily compliance with US safety
and emissions standards. I am very much interested in the safety side and
it builds on my trauma experience in Vietnam and later as a volunteer EMT
for many years.
"I found my education at Lehigh in the A&S school to be
a real benefit. In particular, the mathematics portion has allowed me over
these years to pick of material, papers, books, etc. in many areas (statistics,
reliability, mechanics, electronics, biomechanics, chemistry, etc.) and
read/use the material."
"Spent the first 11 years of professional life with a company
supplying computer control systems to electric utility generating plants
and power system control centers. Started as a system programmer working
with real-time operating systems and then as an applications programmer
for specialized utility control functions. Elevated my position over time
to supervisor on projects, manager of application software departments,
and finally director of software development for the utility end of the
business.
"From 1979 until the present, I have been working with a consulting
firm (KEMA) that also specializes in such systems. Work involves automation
feasibility studies, requirements specifications, bid evaluations, design
monitoring, and testing---all for electric utility clients.
"The discipline of mathematics has brought me job and financial
success. Some higher-level mathematics is used in power system modeling
and network security functions, so I keep up with that a little."
"I got BAs in Mathematics and Chemistry with a minor in English.
I started a PhD in physical chemistry and obtained one in biochemistry.
In the last 6 years, the clear mathematical methods that I learned at Lehigh
have become invaluable. I have had to create mathematical and computational
underpinnings for biological problems related to gene expression and to
the Human Genome Project.
"I had to discard what I knew about metric spaces, tensor calculus,
and engineering mathematics for understanding biological processes. I ended
up using spaces with strange Hausdorffian metrics to understand the physical
mapping of chromosomes. I ended up using the tensor calculus of dropping
stars into black holes to understand gene regulation. Both of these applications
take place in spaces that are more statistical than normal spaces are.
"To me, there are a lot of fascinating mathematical problems
that are just starting to open up in biology. The difficulty for a math
major in understanding these problems is that traditional approaches will
not work…
also that understanding the problems is computationally intense.
"For instance, biological proofs seem to be best thought of,
not as a linear proof, but as a series of conditionally true statements
that create Bayesian limits around a small volume where the answer must
lie. One approach to understanding this view of physical mapping resulted
in using 6 workstations 24 hours a day for a year to understand the problem."
He encourages people who can think clearly about such things to contact
him at fairfiel@trail.com.
"After graduating, I taught high school math in a public school
in New Hampshire. The next year I joined the Peace Corps and spent two
years in rural Jamaica working on a Ministry of Education project aimed
at training elementary school teachers in "new maths." It was a wonderful
experience. On return to the US, I took a position teaching math to learning
disabled and emotionally-disturbed adolescents at a small private school
in Cambridge, MA. I took evening classes and received a Masters from Boston
University in Special Education.
"Then I went on to obtain a PhD in 1982 in educational and developmen
tal
psychology at University of Michigan.
I focused on cognitive development and learning, with a particular
interest in children’s mathematical cognition.
Next I was Assistant Professor in Psychology at SUNY Stony Brook for
three years, then visited the Max Planck Institute in Berlin for a year,
and since 1986 have been at UC Riverside, where I am now tenured Associate
Professor of educational and developmental psychology. My research interests
have included memory development, achievement motivation, and interactions
between school-aged children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Also, after four long years of training, I was recently licensed as a child
clinical psychologist."
"I had the incredible fortune of being made a Bell Labs fellow
in 1992. I am head of secure systems research department in Murray Hill,
and was able to keep my whole department together in AT&T. Previously
I worked at Bell Labs in Andover, MA. The Bell Labs split-up was traumatic.
"Although I work in NJ (moving to Florham Park from Murray Hill),
I and my family (wife Melanie and three children) are living outside Jacksonvill
e,
FL, as I am also working on electronic cash systems with AT&T Universal
Card. I commute weekly!
"I still do some Math Research, mostly applied stuff. I’ve been
working on the theory of random generation from ‘non-deterministic sources’
most recently. Most of my work has been in cryptography and secure systems
design and is classified, but since I joined research in Murray Hill a
couple of years ago, I’ve been able to ‘come out.’ I was deeply embroiled
in the Clipper chip controversy, on both sides of that issue."
"Prior to attending Lehigh, I worked as a large scale system
computer operator at the Social Security Administration on night shift
while attending undergraduate school during the day. After obtaining a
BS, I became a graduate assistant at Lehigh, where I worked in the computer
center and obtained a Masters under Gregory McAllister.
"Next I worked as a mathematician at the Department of Defense,
participating in the design of tactical nuclear weapons, battlefield switches,
and developing probabilistic wargame models. Later I worked as a Technical
Advisor to the Director for Data Automation.
"I went from Defense to SSA, where I served as Director of Systems
Planning and Control, and later as Deputy Associate Commissioner for Systems.
"Then I returned to Defense as Associate Director for Technology
in the Foreign Military Sales Program Office.
Here we redesigned the various military department customer order control
systems, as well as the Defense Integrated Financial System.
"Then I went to the US General Accounting Office, where I now
serve as Director for Information Systems Methodology and Support. We basically
serve as both a change agent and support staff to the various audit groups."
"After receiving my MS degree, I was an adjunct professor at
a number of local colleges. I eventually became a fulltime faculty member
at Alvernia College, in Reading, where I am currently Associate Professor
of Mathematics.
"In 1993, I received a Doctor of Education in educational technology
from Lehigh. My thesis was entitled ‘An analysis of the perceived impact
of computing devices on calculus instruction in engineering curricula.’
"My research interests include (a) probability distributions
and p-values for tests of hypothesis, (b) sequences and series and their
convergence or divergence, and (c) technology use in the study and learning
of all facets of mathematics. I am a media reviewer for mathematics software
and technology products for TechTrends."
"After graduation from Lehigh, I went to Northwestern for graduate
school in mathematics, where I received a PhD in 1980. Since then I have
been employed at Case Western Reserve, where I am currently professor and
chair."
"Lehigh prepared me for a career as an actuary in innumerable
ways. There are the obvious ones; the broad-based academic training, the
analytic tools, the way the Master’s Qualifying exams prepared me for the
regimen of the actuarial exams. But there are many more subtle influences
like my choice of writing implement. You see, I am a wp actuary, I use
a wood pencil."
He goes on to write a long essay on his love affair with wood
pencils, as opposed to mechanical pencils or pens. This article appeared
in the Spring 1996 issue of Contingency magazine, published by the American
Academy of Actuaries.
He thanks Ed Assmus for a "very interesting introduction to
group theory. I’m glad to have been able to use it to make some small discoverie
s
in the field of cryptography.
"I have a web site (http://world.std.com/~dpj/)
that links to a paper I published last year in ACM Computer Communications
Review, which applies elementary group theory to do password verification
over a network. It also shows a fix for an overlooked problem in Diffie-Hellman
encryption."
He is with Integrity Sciences in Westboro, MA.
"I received a J.D. degree from New York Law School in 1983 and
an MBA, with a concentration in finance, from Univ of Chicago in 1993.
"I am a partner in the Chicago-based law firm of Sidley &
Austin and am resident in the firm’s New York office.
Sidley is an international law firm with approximately 750 lawyers
in 8 major cities worldwide. It is approximately the
4th largest law firm in the US.
"My practice is concentrated in state securities regulation,
and federal broker-dealer and NASD regulation.
"I joined Sidley in 1995 and for the 10 years prior thereto
was with the NYC law firm of Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett. Prior to
that, I did a brief stint in the legal department of Integrated Resources,
a syndicator of investment programs.
"I look upon my Lehigh education quite fondly and believe that
it provided me with a solid analytical foundation for both my legal studies
and the highly quantitative and rigorous MBA-finance program at Univ of
Chicago."
"After graduation, I went right to work for IBM as a programmer.
I’ve been with IBM ever since, and am now located in Southbury, CT. I’ve
had a number of positions within IBM, all within the Information Technology
side of the business. At present, I am leading a project which will take
all of IBM’s worldwide fixed asset accounting systems and consolidate them
into one single application. I have built on the foundations taught in
my computer courses (part of the math program back then) as I’ve moved
through IBM. If I had to give advice to the undergrads at LU, I would very
highly suggest that they combine their curriculum with some practical business,
writing, and public speaking courses."
"After Lehigh I did an MA (and an M.A.T.) at Ind.-U.-Bloomington.
I met my wife Kathy there who now has a PhD in Math Ed from IU. We went
on to Southern Illinois Univ after having our first child, where I finished
a PhD in
combinatorics/algebra and had a second son. We just started positions
at Univ of North Dakota, Grand Forks. Kathy is a
tenure-track professor in the ed dept and I’m a part-time lecturer
in the math dept."
Jeff is interested in hearing from or about other LU grads of
his era who have gone on to PhDs and academe.
He values the breadth of his LU education, and is working on inserting
mathematics into an Integrated Studies program at UND.
"I started my college life with the intent of being an eye doctor,
hence, I majored in chemistry. I was a decent student and got whirled up
in the ‘all the smart students are engineers’ tornado that swept our dorm.
So I tried my hand in mechanical engineering. The field was not as interesting
as I expected, hence as a junior I again changed my major. My courses were
now too diversified to go back to chemistry but I still wanted to go to
optometry school. What to do? Well, I always loved math, so I figured let
me try Statistics. As for optometry school, Fundamental Science met the
requirements.
"So I graduated with two degrees. After working with computers
for 1 ½ years, I entered optometry school. Four years later (4-97)
I am about to graduate. Optometry school was a demanding time, but my training
at Lehigh was sound and prepared me well. Although I may never use my statistics
skills again (unless I do research) the analytical thinking I developed
will help me for years to come."
"I live and work in Atlanta, GA. I work for a medium-sized software
company here. They’ve given me the opportunity to travel, learn about client/ser
ver
computing, and work with clients from nuclear power plants to steel mills.
All this and they pay me, too.
"The Georgia National Guard helps me fulfill my commitment to
the Army. I am doing well and am due for a promotion to First Lieutenant
next month (7-97)."
is working for Allied Signal in Greenbelt, Md., and lives in
Silver Spring, Md.