2007 Scholarship and Awards Ceremony
April 26, 2007, Neill Hall Hacker Lounge
The department was pleased to honor its many outstanding students with scholarships and awards at the annual Scholarship and Awards Ceremony. A reception with refreshments followed. Scholarships and awards are made possible by the generosity of our donors, which is deeply appreciated. For a more complete description of each scholarship, please visit the department scholarship page. Click on a image to see a larger size of the same photo.
Peter Klosterman received the Bell Outstanding Freshman Award, presented by David Watkins.
Peter has a 4.0 grade average and is a WSU Distinguished Regents Scholar. He was valedictorian of his high school class and is a National Merit Commended Scholar. He has been on the President's Honor Roll and is the Washington State University Mortar Board Outstanding Freshman Scholar. He is considering either a major in bioengineering or a major in mathematics that would allow him to teach at the secondary level.
Daniel Forsman received the Knebelman Outstanding Senior Award, presented by Alexander Khapalov.
Daniel is from Montesano, Washington was salutarian of his high school graduating class and captain of his high school varsity soccer team. He is a WSU Regents Scholar. He will graduate on May 5th with a degree in Mathematics (Actuarial Science option) and plans to return to western Washington to work as an actuary. He hopes to make contributions to the field of actuarial science and one day return to graduate school to pursue more education in mathematics.
Talitha Anderson received the J. Russell and Mildred H. Vatnsdal Memorial Scholarship presented by Michael Kallaher.
Talitha is in her junior year pursuing a degree in mathematics with the Teacher Preparation option. She is a member of the Math Club and has been elected secretary of the club for next year. She has been an active member of her hall government in the last two years serving as secretary, treasurer, and president. Last summer she worked on a research project through the Undergraduates in Math and Biology Program and this February competed in the COMAP Mathematical Modeling competition. She plans to pursue a master's degree in Mathematics to work in a public high school to, "have a positive impact in the lives of my students much like my teachers did in mine."
Emilee Hearrean received the Maryann Hawley Fesser Memorial Scholarship, presented by Michael Kallaher.
Emilee has been on the President's Honor Roll every semester at WSU. She has received the Washington State Promise Scholarship, Bismarck Turner Scholarship, University Achievement Award, Math Endowment Scholarship, National S.m.a.r.t. Grant Scholarship and the America Scholarship. She is an undergraduate teaching assistant for the department and a yoga instructor for the UREC as well as for Pullman Parks and Recreation. Emilee is pursuing a bachelor's degree in math education to become a high school math teacher. She plans to complete a masters degree in education and also obtain a bachelor's degree in kinesiology.
Ryan Reisert received a William and Mary Lynn Graber Endowment Fund Scholarship, presented by Duane DeTemple.
Ryan is a recipient of the Washington Promise Scholarship, the Delbert E. & Marilyn M. Memorial Scholarship, The Rogers Alumni Association Scholarship, The Rogers Boosters Club Scholarship, the Mathematics Undergraduate Endowment and the Washington State University Achievement Award. He has been on the President's Honor roll every semester and has maintained a cumulative GPA of 3.97. Ryan is an undergraduate teaching assistant in the Department of Mathematics. He would like to return to his former high school to teach mathematics and later pursue a masters degree in education.
Kelly Stratton received a William and Mary Lynn Graber Endowment Fund Scholarship presented by Duane DeTemple.
Kelly was valedictorian of her high school senior class and has been on the WSU President's Honor Roll since Fall of 2004. She received the Certificate of Excellence for Third Year Language Study, the Richland High School National Honor Society Scholarship, the Glenn Terrell Presidential Scholarship, the University Achievement Award, the Washington Promise Scholarship, the Frank and Irene Potter Memorial, the Deans Scholarship, the Kenneth Vandeford Scholarship and the Knebelman Sophomore Memorial Scholarship. She is the current treasurer of the Math Club. She will graduate from WSU with a degree in mathematics and a degree in Spanish. She plans to attend graduate school to earn a maters degree in actuarial science.
Patrick Valeri received a William and Mary Lynn Graber Endowment Fund Scholarship, presented by Michael Kallaher.
Patrick has been on the WSU President's Honor Roll the last seven semesters and received the William and Mary Lynn Graber Endowment fund last year. He has been an undergraduate teaching assistant for the department for the last five semesters. He is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ and the WSU Math Club. This summer Patrick will be married and will student teach in Spokane in the fall. He plans to substitute teach in the spring of 2008 and would like to teach in rural Alaska for a few years before beginning a master's program in either mathematics or education.
Corby Harwood received a Sidney G. and Evelyn Hacker Fellowship for Graduate Research, presented by V.S. Manoranjan.
Corby was chosen to receive this award based on his high grades and graduate research work. His research is under V.S. Manoranjan in modeling various physical phenomena such as algae population dynamics, medical counters to changes in red blood cell count, and optimizing lead-acid battery output. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in mathematics and is a teaching assistant in the Department of Mathematics.
Yannan Sun received a Sidney G. and Evelyn Hacker Fellowship for Graduate Research, presented by Alex Khapalov.
Yannan has been a teaching assistant in the department since 2004, as well as a grader and tutor for math help sessions. Her areas of research focus on multivariate distributions, tail dependence comparisons, and extremal dependence. She has completed a paper with Haijun Li titled, "Tail Dependence of Heavy-Tailed Scale Mixtures of Multivariate Distributions." She has maintained a high gpa while completing her coursework, teaching and doing research.
DeAnne Morris received a Sidney G. and Evelyn Hacker Fellowship for Graduate Teaching, presented by Judi McDonald.
DeAnne has been a teaching assistant since 2002 and is highly respected by students. She receives high evaluation marks in every class she teaches. She has taught Begining Algebra, Intermediate Algebra, Precalculus, Finite Mathematics, and Linear Algebra. Last fall she taught Introduction to Analysis II, a senior class in an area outside her research focus, and did it well. She has graded for Linear Algebra, Honors Calculus III, Mathematical Reasoning, and Introduction to Analysis I. DeAnne plans to receive her Ph.D. in mathematics next spring.
Amy Yielding received a Sidney G. and Evelyn Hacker Fellowship for Graduate Teaching presented by Judi McDonald.
Amy Yielding has taught Math 107, 171, 210, and 220, and received high evaluation marks in each of them. This spring Ms. Yielding agreed to teach a second section of Math 220. Not only was she able to handle an overloaded schedule, she also made significant progress on her research during this time. She is highly supportive of undergraduate and graduate students which is evidenced in the personal care she shows them.
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Linnea Haight received the Paul and Marjorie Clement Memorial Mathematics Scholarship.
Linnea Haight is a WSU freshman who expects to major in mathematics. Her long term goal is to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. She has been working toward this goal ever since she "discovered numbers." Her first year gpa is high and she attributes this to rarely missing class, always doing homework, and studying. She say's, "Having a talent is only a start. It must be exercised if it's going to develop into anything worthwhile." Linnea is from Uniontown, Washington.
Michael Tsatsomeros received an Outstanding Research Award for Faculty, presented by Robert Dillon.
Michael's research is on Linear Algebra, Matrix Analysis and their applications in various mathematical sciences. A mainstay in his research is the theory of matrices with nonnegative entries, known as PerWe should go walking.ron-Frobenius theory, as well as various generalizations. He is also interested in qualitative matrix theory, namely, the study of matrix properties based on the pattern of the zero entries and the pattern of signs of the entries.
Michael attributes many of his research accomplishments to the pursuit of a solution to an elusive open problem, introduced to him by his doctorate supervisor, Michael Neumann. Although there has been no solution to this problem yet, the pursuit has provided an opportunity to learn new ideas and techniques, and has led to several fruitful projects. In 2006, Michael's most recent Ph.D. student, Kent Griffin, completed his dissertation by solving the Principal Minor Assignment problem, that is, the reverse engineering of a matrix from the determinants of its principal submatrices. Kent is now employed as a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Symantec Research Labs.
Krishna Jandhyala received an Outstanding Research Award for Faculty, presented by Robert Mifflin.
Krishna has published eighteen research papers in the last five years. His research in the change-point area has significant applications in such diverse areas as environmental science, quality control and financial economics. His work in the area of modeling financial log returns under the scale mixture framework has resulted in the generalization of the highly popular Arbirtrage Pricing Theory (APT) linear model to high frequency heavy-tailed financial data, and the generalized APT model involves non-linearities. The derived non-linear APT model is very versatile and can be applied to model high frequency data such as seconds and minutes data collected on an online basis, which overcomes serious limitations of the previous linear model. He is currently developing theory for multivariate change-point methods for non-normal data and is pursuing applications of such methods to multivariate quality control, and to the complex problem of monitoring time trends in multiple environmental time series.
The department had a high number of individuals receiving College of Arts and Sciences awards this year. The following were also recognized during the Scholarship and Awards Ceremony.
| Name | Award |
|---|---|
| Duane DeTemple | WSU Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching | Mathematical Association of America PNW Regional Award: Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics |
| Amy Yielding | Naval ROTC Faculty Excellence Award |
| Alex Khapalov | Naval ROTC Faculty Excellence Award |
| Jeanette Martin | College of Sciences, Faculty Advising Award |
| Terry Wagoner | College of Sciences, Outstanding Staff Award |
| Bala Krishnamoorthy | College of Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition. Bala Krishnamoorthy was a mentor to Chris Deutsch who took first place in the Math/Inter-disciplinary category |
COMAP Math Modeling Contest students were recognized with a Certificate of Achievement. Mark Schumaker was their mentor. The students were: Talitha Anderson, Natalie Baerlocher, and Mitchell Nitta.