In her role as co-director of the EDGE summer program, Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr attended and co-organized EDGE25: Mobilizing the Power of Diversity at Bryn Mawr College from October 12-14. She co-MCed the Thursday night reunion of over 150 EDGE alumna. One of the tasks involved in this role was creating a slideshow of 25 years of EDGE photos and a 20-minute video compilation of 25 years of EDGE talent shows. She also MC-ed the closing session on Saturday, introducing the final three talks of the conference. SU and EDGE alumna Elyssa Sliheet ’19 and Daniela Beckelhymer ’20 were also in attendance. The full schedule of dynamic speakers across multiple disciplines can be found here.

Professor of Mathematics and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr published an article, “Collaboratively Re-envisioning Calculus for the Modern Student,” with co-authors Joel Kilty and Alex McAllister from Centre College in the MAA Notes series “Justice Through the Lens of Calculus: Framing New Possibilities for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” The article discusses the collaborative work Southwestern and Centre’s mathematics faculty did in creating our new Modern Calculus sequence. Read the article here.

Southwestern had a great showing at the 2023 Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America, held March 24-26 in Stephenville, TX. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr received the 2023 Ron Barnes Distinguished Service to Students Award, given in recognition of faculty who have distinguished themselves through service and support of undergraduate students within the Texas Section. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton received the 2023 Distinguished Service Award in recognition of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional service to the Texas Section. Shelton also served as Departmental Liaison and participated in the Business Meeting. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross participated in the Project NeXT session. President Emeritus of Southwestern University and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Edward Burger presented an invited plenary talk, “Paper folding for the organically challenged: Uncovering beauty and structure through effective thinking.” We had eight student presentations, one of which won an award, by 13 students and one alum. This was the most student presentations by far of any institution besides the host institution. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura supervised the following student talks: Zek McCormick ’24: “Applying Linear Algebra to Penrose Tilings” won an award for Best Student Paper Within a Session, Oliver Johnson ’24: “How accurately did Van Eyck paint the chandelier in the Arnolfini Portrait? A geometric analysis contributing to a decades-old debate,” and Isabella Robinson ’25, Oliver Johnson ’24: “Solving Sudoku Puzzles Through Linear Algebra.” Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr supervised the following student talks: Anderson Johnson ’24, Paige Thompson ’26, Kyla Gorman ’21: “Domino Antimagic Configurations,” Alley Koenig ’24, Casandra Nunez ’26: “Subtractive Edge Magic Labelings,” Kathryn Altman ’24, Lauren Calzado ’23: “An Exploration of Difference Distance Magic Graph Labelings,” and Aaron Garza ’26, Kaiden Salaz ’26: “What is the smallest area? A parabolic parable.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton supervised the following student talk: Emma Lewis ’23, Jillian Reese ’23: “An ODD Look at Theorems in Differential Equations.” This work was funded with a grant from the Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics, collaborating with a student team at the University of North Texas-Denton, supervised by Joe Iaia. A team of four students competed in the Math Bowl: Altman, Calzado, Koenig, and Jess Kazmir ’23, Yasmine Soto ’25, and Adrianna Flores-Vivas ’24 also attended the meeting.

Three faculty members and a student joined over five thousand mathematicians at the largest math gathering in the world, Joint Mathematics Meetings, in Boston, MA, January 4-7, 2023. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the undergraduate mathematics honor society Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) were among the fifteen partner professional organizations. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Isoperimetric solutions to a 1-dimensional problem within regions and log-concave density” in the AMS Contributed Paper Session on Topics in Analysis and Control Theory. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a four-hour Professional Enhancement Program, “Visualizing Projective Geometry Through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Distance Magic Labelings of Directed Graphs” in the AMS Special Session on The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program (EDGE): Pure and Applied Talks by Women Math Warriors. She also participated in multiple events in her capacity as Co-director of EDGE. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Cars, Competition, and Cholera” in the AMS Special Session on Stimulating Student Engagement in Differential Equations through Modeling Activities. Oliver Johnson ’24 presented “Perspective Analysis of Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait” in the PME Contributed Session on Research by Undergraduates. This research was supervised by Futamura.

Three faculty members and a student joined over five thousand mathematicians at the largest math gathering in the world, Joint Mathematics Meetings, in Boston, MA, January 4-7, 2023. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the undergraduate mathematics honor society Pi Mu Epsilon (PME) were among the fifteen partner professional organizations. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Isoperimetric solutions to a 1-dimensional problem within regions and log-concave density” in the AMS Contributed Paper Session on Topics in Analysis and Control Theory. Professor of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a four-hour Professional Enhancement Program, “Visualizing Projective Geometry Through Photographs and Perspective Drawings,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Distance Magic Labelings of Directed Graphs” in the AMS Special Session on The Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Program (EDGE): Pure and Applied Talks by Women Math Warriors. She also participated in multiple events in her capacity as Co-director of EDGE. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Cars, Competition, and Cholera” in the AMS Special Session on Stimulating Student Engagement in Differential Equations through Modeling Activities. Oliver Johnson ’24 presented “Perspective Analysis of Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait” in the PME Contributed Session on Research by Undergraduates. This research was supervised by Futamura.