LA/MS SECTION NEWSLETTER Fall 2002 Volume 25, Number 1

Welcome to the Fall 2002 online newsletter for the Louisiana/Mississippi Section of the Mathematical Association of America.  Plans are to publish three newsletters this upcoming year--online versions in the Fall and Spring and a printed Winter edition mailed out sometime in January.  If you know of someone who does not have access to the online versions, please print out a copy and send it to them or send an email to the Newsletter editor with the person's name and address and a copy will be mailed to them.

Plans are to announce these online editions of the newsletters via our section email list.  If you are not on the list, you may join by sending an email to travis@mc.edu and requesting that you be added to the list.

Finally, anyone is welcome to submit information for publication in the upcoming section newsletters.  Send your article to the Newsletter editor being sure to note that you want the information published in the newsletter.  Deadlines for submitting materials will be distributed via our section mailing list. 

Spring 2002 Treasurer's Report
 
Member News:


Louisiana Tech University - Reported by Bernd Schroeder schroder@coes.latech.edu


New Appointments:

• David Gao (Professor) and David Faul (Instructor)

Retirements:


• Margaret Coleman, Carol DeVille

Tenure:


• Bernd Schroeder

University of Louisiana - Lafayette - Reported by Roger Waggoner

New appointments:

• Barbara Gonzalez, Sophia Jang, Kathleen Lopez, and Hongtao Yang have been appointed as assistant professors. Doug Larmour is a visiting assistant professor. Donna Fatheree has replaced Darren Alcock as Director of Freshman Math.
• Karen Aguillard, Catherine McKay, Melissa Myers, and Sharolyn Underwood have been appointed as instructors. Jose' Chong, Phyllis Desormeaux, and Thomas Peltier are temporary instructors.
  

Promotions:

• Patricia Beaulieu has been promoted to assistant professor.
• Bradd Clark has been named Dean of the College of Sciences.

Retirements:

• Margaret Blumberg and Peter Dickinson have retired.

Resignations:

• Darren Alcock and Qin Sheng have resigned.

Louisiana State University at Shreveport - Reported by Jules Doucet JDOUCET@pilot.lsus.edu

New Department Name

• The departments of Computer Science and Mathematics have been combined into the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Dr. Paul Sisson is the chair of this Department.

 New Appointments

• Wanda K. Moseley has joined the Math Faculty at LSU-S as an Instructor starting Fall 2002. She had been teaching as an Adjunct at LSU-S  since 1999. Prior to this she had been teaching at BPCC since 1996.

Sabbaticals

• Dr. Carlos C. Spaht II  is on sabbatical for Fall 2002. He will be back at LSU-S for the Spring 2003.

Southeastern Louisiana University - Reported by Randy Wills rwills@selu.edu

Grants:

• The department has funding from several external grants. One grant funded by LaSIP with PIs Rebecca Muller and Lou Schultz is "Networking to Advance Mathematics Education".

New Appointments:

• Dr. Chris Devillier received his Ph.D. from ULL in 2000, and comes to us from LSU Eunice. His area of expertise is Algebraic Systems and Functional Equations.
• Dr. William Vautaw received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 2002. His area of expertise is Surface Mapping Class Groups.
• Dr. Tilak deAlwis was awarded the first endowed professorship in the Department of Mathematics in the Fall of  2002. The Kennely-Voss Professorship carries a two year term, and allows the awardee to conduct research which emphasizes the use of technology.

Promotions:

• Dr. Elizabeth Gray and Dr. Edgar Reyes were promoted to the rank of Full Professor effective Fall 2002.

Mississippi College – Reported by Tommy Leavelle leavelle@mc.edu

Honors: 

• Tommy Leavelle was chosen as the Student Government Association's Professor of the Year for 2001-2002.  Tommy Leavelle was also chosen as a resident London Professor during the spring 2002 semester. Teresa Floyd has been chosen to be the senior resident London Professor for spring of 2004.

New Appointments: 

• Steve O'Neal is a new instructor of Computer Science who is completing his Ph.D. at Louisiana State.

Promotions:

• Tom Bennet, Teresa Floyd and Glenn Wiggins were promoted from Associate Professor to Professor. 

Tenure:

• Tom Bennet was also granted tenure.