Mathematics Majors Shared Summer Experiences

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Five Westminster College students shared their "Summer Opportunities in the Major" at a Sept. 24 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science colloquium.

Each student participated in an internship or Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU).

James Bryan, a senior mathematics major, is a son of Leigh Bryan-Taylor and James Bryan, both of Greensburg, and is a graduate of Greater Latrobe High School. He continued an internship that began in 2007 as a network administrator at Shenango Presbyterian Senior Care in New Wilmington. His responsibilities are to maintain the Microsoft Small Business server, workstations, and network infrastructure, providing him an opportunity to learn and to apply his knowledge in a real-world environment.

Amanda Gentzel, a senior sacred music and computer science major, is a daughter of David and Margaret Gentzel of Wexford and a graduate of Pine-Richland High School. She participated in an REU at the University of Massachusetts, where she was part of a lab group that worked on a research project in the RIPPLES lab on an automatic lecture capture system. The system captures a video of the lecturer, shots of the whiteboard, and images from a laptop, and then processes them to save only significant frames. She worked to modify the laptop capture to recognize when a video was being played and handle it appropriately.

Kurtis Gills, a senior physics and mathematics major, is a son of William and Susan Gills of Mercer and a graduate of Mercer High School. As part of a physics REU at Penn State University, Gills built a device that measures resonant frequencies of a solid.

Kati McConville, a senior mathematics major, is a daughter of Keith McConville of Wexford and a graduate of North Allegheny High School. She received a full scholarship to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-funded Boston University Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics. Her work included modules in biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical trials, statistical genetics, and training in Statistical Analysis Software (SAS). A major component of the program was analysis in SAS of data collected in the Framingham Heart Study, including generating descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, chi-square tests, and multiple linear and logistic regression analysis. 

April Scudere, a senior mathematics major, is a daughter of Anthony and Barbara Scudere of Fowler, Ohio, and a graduate of Brookfield High School. She participated in an REU at the University of North Carolina Asheville, where she worked on a project that involved showing that the Catalan numbers appear in a random tree construction, "Use It or Lose It Trees." Her group learned to write papers using Latex, gave presentations, and listened to mathematics lecturers from a variety of colleges and universities.

Contact Dr. Pamela Richardson, Westminster assistant professor of mathematics, at (724) 946-7286 or e-mail richarpa@westminster.edu for additional information.

About Westminster College...
Founded in 1852 and related to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Westminster College is a top tier liberal arts college and a national leader in graduation rate performance, according to U.S. News Guide to America's Best Colleges. Westminster ranked third among liberal arts colleges in social mobility, according to the Washington Monthly College Guide, and is one of the most affordable national liberal arts colleges in Pennsylvania. Westminster is also honored as one of "The Best 371 Colleges" and "Best in the Northeast" by The Princeton Review, and is named to the President's Honor Roll for excellence in service learning.

Nearly 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students benefit from individualized attention from dedicated faculty while choosing from 41 majors and nearly 100 organizations on the New Wilmington, Pa., campus.