Math faculty present research, insights at largest annual mathematics conference

​Five mathematics professors presented at the largest annual mathematics conference in the world, the 2017 Joint Mathematics Meetings, held Jan. 4-7 in Atlanta.

Professor Jeff Clark presented on “Teaching Combinatorics to Diverse Student Interests.” In addition, he attended a meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Committee on Minicourses and in his role as a committee member, he monitored a minicourse that met over two days. Finally, Clark attended a meeting of the MAA’s section officers as chair-elect of the Southeastern Section.

Professor Todd Lee presented “Flipped Mastery Cycle Learning of Calculus II using a Plethora of Tools.” Lee’s talk included sample screencastings, descriptions of the equipment and e-tools used, demonstrations of the Moodle and WebAssign (online homework system) setups, and the work flow used for the course. Lee currently serves as Faculty Fellow for Technology.

Assistant Professors Kristen Mazur and Aaron Trocki delivered talks in themed sessions. Mazur spoke on “A Basic Approach for Creating Interactive Calculus Lessons in Mathematica,” in which she shared how she uses the software program Mathematica as a learning tool in calculus. Trocki presented “Using History as a Vehicle for Humanizing Mathematics,” in the MAA’s Session on Humanistic Mathematics.

A.L. Hook Associate Professor Chad Awtrey gave two talks on joint work with Elon undergraduates Michael Keenan ’16 and Jade Schrader ’16 and Associate Professor Jim Beuerle titled “Constructing Galois 2-extensions of the 2-adic numbers,” and “When is a quartic polynomial isomorphic to an even polynomial?” Awtrey’s invited talk, “Some open problems in computational Galois theory,” was part of a special session organized by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Division of Mathematics and Computer Science.  His talk discussed background, recent results, and potential avenues of further inquiry in his research area.  Awtrey also conducted official business in his national service roles on CUR and the mathematics honor society Pi Mu Epsilon.