DEPARTMENT
FACTS FACULTY
CATALOGUE
OPPORTUNITIES
ALUMNI STUDENTS LINKS
SENIOR PROJECT GUIDELINES
Facilities
Strengths
The Mathematics Department is housed in Carr Hall. Built in 1964 and
named for Ossian E. Carr '00, Carr Hall underwent a $3.5 million renovation
in 1995. Improvements made include better lighting and ventilation,
the addition of central air conditioning, a large new Freshman Chemistry
lab, two new computer labs, and new faculty offices.
The mathematics computer labs each consist of about 13 dedicated workstations
with Mathematica and LaTeX installed. Students are also able to access
their college network accounts, as well as the Internet, from the Carr
Hall computer labs.
Allegheny
Distinctions
- Close working relationships between faculty and students.
- Use of computer workstations (configured into classroom/lab setup)
and Mathematica (powerful computer algebra and graphing system) for
calculus classroom exercises and homework projects.
- Accessibility of the mathematics faculty.
- Encouragement and assistance for students to attend professional
conferences and to present papers at conferences.
- Active student chapter of MAA (Mathematical Association of America).
- Required individual Senior Project demonstrates to graduate schools
and prospective employers that ability to complete a major, independent
assignment.
Endorsements
- One of the nation's top six institutions for consistently producing
graduates earning bachelor's degrees in mathematics and the sciences;
in the top seven for graduating women with bachelor's degrees in mathematics
and the sciences.
- "The reason I have pursued mathematics as a career is attributable
to the way the department encouraged and supported me." Alumna
- "If you have any other students as good as this one, please send
them to us." Graduate program administrator, West Virginia University
- In the last 20 years, half of Allegheny's valedictorians have been
mathematics majors.
- Mathematics faculty includes past winner of the Julian Ross Award
for excellence in teaching
- Department ranks in the top 8.5% among private, undergraduate institutions
in production of eventual Ph.D.s in mathematics since 1920.
- Department's graduates have a 95% acceptance rate at graduate and
professional schools.
Student Research
and Special Projects
Every Alleghenian completes a Senior Project in his or her major field
- a significant piece of original work, designed by each student and
a faculty advisor, that demonstrates to employers and graduate schools
the ability to complete a major assignment, to work independently, to
analyze and synthesize information and to write and speak persuasively.
Recent
Senior Projects
Some noteworthy Senior Projects in mathematics:
- "The Arithmetic Mean-Geometric Mean Inequality as the Basis for
Geometric Programming"
- "An Application of a Deterministic Model for the Spread of Measles"
- "Fourier Series of a Differentiable Periodic Function and an Application"
- "The Sturm-Liouville Boundary Value Problem"
- "An Introduction to the Analysis of the Family of f Composition
Series"
- "The Travelling Salesman Problem: Analysis and Application"
- "Petersen-like Graphs"
- "Number Theory Problems of Cosgrave and Halmos"
Other
Student Research
- "A Value for Zero-monotonic Partially Defined Games" student/faculty
summer research project funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
- Students often are involved in one-semester independent projects
at research centers such as Oakridge, Brookhaven, Woods Hole and Argonne.
Independent
Study
Students, working one-on-one with a faculty advisor, independently
pursue areas of study not offered in the standard curriculum. Good preparation
for Senior Project.
Selected
Student Achievements
- Approximately 4 students annually attend at least one meeting of
a professional mathematical association.
- Two students were recently accepted into Undergraduate Summer Research
Programs - one at the University of Tennessee and the other at Northern
Arizona University. One presented a paper on his research results
at the 1995 Joint American Mathematics Society-Mathematics Association
of America meeting in San Francisco.
- Senior mathematics majors routinely present their senior projects
at professional mathematics conferences.
- As a result of a summer NSF Student Research Grant, an Allegheny
student had two papers on finite group theory published in a refereed
journal that accepts only papers containing original results.
- Several students have attended a six-week summer mathematics camp,
developing problem-solving skills by working on advanced problems
in a variety of areas.
