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Students and Faculty Present at Mathematics Conference

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Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2018

A group of Westminster College mathematics faculty and majors participated in the annual meeting of the Allegheny Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) at Penn State Behrend.

At the meeting, professor of mathematics Dr. Carolyn Cuff received the 2018 Distinguished Faculty Mentor of Undergraduate Mathematics Students Award for her significant contributions to the development of undergraduate students in mathematics as scholars. Dr. Pamela Richardson, associate professor of mathematics, was elected chair of the Section. Her duties includes serving one year as chair-elect, two years as chair and one year as past chair.

Several students and faculty also had the opportunity to present their research. Honors students Rachael Elliott and Tyler Heintz presented their undergraduate research. Elliot presented her research on the application of k-modes clustering to institutional advancement data, while Heintz presented his research on finding unimodular roots of complex polynomials. 

Trevor Arrigoni and Ava Hoag also had the opportunity to present their capstone research. Arrigoni presented his project entitled “On Inverse Semigroups of Self-Similar Graph Actions,” and Hoag presented her's entitled “A Glimpse at Space Around Black Holes.”  

Associate professor of mathematics Dr. David Offner gave a presentation of his research entitled, “A New Characterization of Extremal Cop-win Graphs.” Dr. Richard Ligo '12, assistant professor of mathematics at Gannon University, presented “Shrinking Square Sets: A Fractal Illustration of Infinite Series.”

Other conference attendees included: associate professor of mathematics Dr. Natacha Fontes-Merz; professor emirita Dr. Barbara Faires; and first-year students Stephen Barr, Jesus Estrada and Cassie Stevens.