St. Norbert College students, faculty attend national mathematics conference

St. Norbert College was well represented at the 2011 national "Mathfest" conference in Lexington, KY this August. Math student senior Hanqin "Caesar" Cai (Shanghai, China), junior Ryan Hallberg (Valders, Wis.), senior Nicole Harp (Appleton, Wis.), senior Brian Pietsch (Green Bay, Wis.), and junior Abby Wendricks (Lena, Wis.), and faculty members John Frohliger, Rick Poss, Terry Jo Leiterman and Kevin Murphy, participated in the event, the joint meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the Pi Mu Epsilon National Honorary Mathematics Society (PME).

Pietsch's presentation, "Parameterizing the Koch Curve," was judged one of the conference's best student presentations. The St. Norbert College team also finished second in the national Math Jeopardy competition at the conference.

Frohliger and Poss helped judge PME student papers. Leiterman judged MAA student papers and gave the presentation "Settling Velocity and Sedimentation in Low Reynolds Number Fluid Systems." Murphy participated in Project NExT, a program for young faculty that is sponsored primarily by the MAA and the ExxonMobil Foundation. He was also a judge in the Student Problem-Solving Competition and presented the talk "Derivation of the Kinetic Component of the Gluon Four Momentum Operator."

Mathematics students from St. Norbert College have presented papers at every summer national meeting since 1985. No other college or university can make that claim.

For more information on the 2011 "Mathfest" conference and St. Norbert College's involvement, contact Rick Poss at 920-403-3198 or rick.poss@snc.edu.