The Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America recently held officer elections and finalized positions for the Executive Committee. Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr has been elected to serve in the three year Chair role (Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past-Chair). Associate Professor of Mathematics John Ross has also been appointed as the Digital Media Editor.

Four faculty members were active at MathFest, the national meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), on August 7-11, in Indianapolis, IN. Associate Professor of Mathematics John Ross presented “Turning a Geometry Project into a Geometry Festival” in the contributed paper session on “Building Community in Mathematics Departments.” Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr presented “Difference Distance Magic Oriented Graphs” in the MAA invited paper session (aligned with an MAA invited address) on “Matching and Labelings in Graphs.” Marr also served on the panel “Creating Successful Study Abroad Programs in Mathematics” to discuss the mathematics courses she offered as part of Southwestern’s London program. Professor and Lord Chair of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura co-led a workshop, “Geometric Puzzles and Brain Teasers in Perspective Art,” with Annalisa Crannell of Franklin & Marshall College and Marc Frantz of Indiana University. This was sponsored by the MAA special interest group “Mathematics and the Arts.” Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Student Modeling Projects in Sports” in the contributed paper session on “Math and Sports.” She also co-organized the contributed paper session “Differential Equations Student Activities and Projects, Big and Small” with Brian Winkel of SIMIODE, Rosemary Farley and Patrice Tiffany of Manhattan College, and Pushpi Paranamana of St. Mary’s College.

Four Mathematics faculty and five students participated in the 2024 Meeting of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held March 22-23 in San Marcos, TX. Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton presented “Mathematical Modeling Projects.” Shelton also performed administrative duties as past Representative of the Texas MAA to the association level MAA Congress, and she served as the Department Liaison. Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross participated in Project NeXT sessions. Professor and Garey Chair of Mathematics Alison Marr and Professor and Lord Chair of Mathematics Fumiko Futamura attended. Alley Koenig ’24 presented “Subtractive Edge Magic Labelings” resulting from the capstone project supervised by Marr, and Kathryn Altman ’24 presented “​​Difference Distance Magic Oriented Graphs,” also supervised by Marr. ​​Amanda Mejia ’27, Camille James ’27, and Kate Dennis ’27 participated in the Calculus Bowl. 

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross has had a paper accepted for publication in the Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry. The paper, “Solution to the n-bubble problem on R with log-concave density,” extends the results of his work with his SCOPE students (mentioned above) in two meaningful ways: it allows for configurations of any number of bubbles (not just 3 or 4), and it relaxes the restrictions on the density function being considered

Assistant Professor of Mathematics John Ross, in collaboration with students Emily Burns ’21, Zariah Whyte ’21, Jesse Stovall ’22, and Evan Alexander ’22, now Coordinator of Student Activities, published an article titled “Isoperimetric 3- and 4-Bubble Results on R With Density |x|.” The paper looks at a mathematical space called a dense number line and explores the geometry of 3- or 4-bubble configurations in this space. The results presented in this article are the result of SCOPE summer research in the summers of 2020 and 2021 and is published in the PUMP Journal of Undergraduate Research.