BGSU Department of Mathematics and Statistics Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Like the entire university, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics has experienced many difficulties in teaching for the past three years (2020-2022) due to the pandemic of COVID-19. Yet for our department, providing high quality math teaching to all spectrums of students in the university has always been our primary mission. In accordance with this goal, the hybrid teaching had gone through with smoothness under the effort of all faculty. As the declining in spreading of the virus and recovering of handling safety and well-being, the department was pleased to return to in-person teaching in Fall 2021. In-person teaching certainly would serve as the best format for math. In the transition back to in person, again as the pandemic time, our department had worked together to manage classroom and many other arrangements in teaching especially for 1000 and 2000-level foundational math classes. To put students in classrooms as designed by the math courses, tremendous commitments had been made to communicate with the upper-level administrators and faculty. As of today, the state of math teaching restores to the “new” normal as before the pandemic.
The program review of the math department had been fulfilled in 2020-2022. In the program review, the department had reassessed all aspects of the programs from undergraduate to doctoral programs. After an extensive data collection and discussion, the report of program review was finalized in April of 2022, and the action plan started in AY 2022-2023. In the past year, the department has actively participated in many events for recruiting new students to increase enrollments of the programs. To better support students’ success in foundational math courses, the faculty in the Math Emporium is revising pedagogical methods in conveying mathematical knowledge including adding more lecture components and shrinking the size of college algebra classes. The foundational math course coordinators led by Dr. Kim Rogers work as a group to increase success rates for different courses, learning how to build up the most appropriate instructional components in a course and on a grading structure for effectively measuring student learning results. In the Ph.D. program of Statistics, the curricula have been updated in March of 2023 for matching the needs of job placements in the field. The department will continue to make progress in the action plan for the next years.
Paralleling with the program review, the Graduate Committee led by Dr. Ben Ward completed the Program Vitality Analysis (PVA) for the graduate programs in December of 2022; the Undergraduate Committee led by Dr. Mihai Staic completed the PVA for the undergraduate programs in April of 2023. The yearly PVA aims to screen changes and issues in enrollments and program designs, and accordingly detected problems can be solved promptly for keeping up with a healthy retention rate and robust curricula for programs. Based upon the yearly PVA, we can also scrutinize the multiple programs in our department to boost student success and job placements.
The department has some highlights:
We were very excited to welcome a new hire in June of 2022, Terrilyn Meel, the graduate secretary. She has been handling the graduate affairs for almost one year, and her work pattern is on a good track of meeting the departmental needs.
Congratulations to Dr. Mihai Staic for being promoted to full professor in 2023.
Congratulations also go to Dr. Kim Rogers for receiving a new grant from NSF in April 2022. This grant will allow her to continuously support the mentoring project for graduate students in our department, which has greatly benefited the foundational math teaching in the past years.
In Fall 2022, we were very happy to welcome one new faculty hire, Dr. Kimberly Morgan, working as an assistant teaching professor and teaching a variety of foundational math courses.
In this academic year, one more thing is worth mentioning. We have more faculty members who attended in-person conferences, and such academic communications and collaborations have gone up to almost the same level of those prior to the pandemic.
In the coming years, the math department and faculty members are ready for facing new challenges with high spirits and enthusiasm, and more effective actions for student success are on the way!
Dr. Junfeng Shang, Professor and Chair
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Congratulations and Welcome to Office Staff
Congratulations to Best of Arts and Sciences Award recipient, Amber Snyder
Amber Snyder, Mathematics and Statistics Department Administrative Assistant, was awarded the Best of Arts and Sciences Award in AY 2022-2023. She was nominated by Dr. Junfeng Shang, the Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
This award is given to an Administrative and/or Classified staff member who provides excellent customer service to the BGSU community, improves the quality of programs and/or services on the BGSU campus, implements a new idea or program to benefit the BGSU community, and demonstrates exemplary commitment to the core values of BGSU.
Amber shines in everything she does. She consistently improves the department environment with her well-developed professional comprehension. She keeps learning more in her position and in other ways, and therefore, strengthens her working quality with growing knowledge. Amber works with heart and mind into it, so her work is always highly efficient and beyond expectations. She can quickly get the point of a task and complete all her projects and tasks with precision and promptness. Amber uses her heart, mind, and on-the-ground behavior to help faculty and students, and her effort and generous support have earned tremendous respect from our faculty and students.
Congratulations, Amber! Thank you for your great job in managing wide ranging responsibilities in the math department.
New Staff Member Joins Our Department
Senior Secretary Terrilyn Meel joined the math and statistics department in June 2022, now handling many responsibilities that help to keep our graduate programs running smoothly. With her effort, Terrilyn quickly learned and earned support from the faculty and students.
Amber remarked on Terrilyn’s work: "Terrilyn radiates the core values while performing her graduate secretary duties. She consistently goes above and beyond performance expectations as a graduate secretary for 70 graduate students by giving a high level of care in every task she tackles as well as pays attention to details in all tasks. She is a fast learner who is willing to learn anything and has a refreshing positive attitude."
The department front office is now in very good hands with the new team of Amber and Terrilyn.
Ning Awarded Professor of Research Excellence 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Ning, recipient of the Professor of Research Excellence Award 2023. The title of Professor of Research Excellence is conferred upon members of the faculty who hold the rank of professor and who have established outstanding national and international recognition through research and publication in their disciplines. The title is for a period of three years.
Dr. Wei Ning currently is a full professor of statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Dr. Ning received his Ph.D. in statistics from Syracuse University in 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012 and full professor in 2018. His research areas include change point analysis, sequential analysis, high-dimensional data analysis, empirical likelihood method, survival analysis, causal inference, and time series analysis.
He has published over 70 research papers in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Ning has been very enthusiastic in advising students and has advised over 15 Ph.D. students and 5 Master's students. He has presented his work in over 20 domestic and international conferences. In recent years, Dr. Ning's research interests focus on developing novel methods based on empirical likelihood method in change point analysis, sequential change point detection of multi-stream data in high dimensional data and causality analysis with applications in medical research.
New Graduate Student Awarded Presidential Diversity Scholarship
Congratulations to our new graduate student, Ph.D. in math, Ayako Carter for being honored with the 2023 Presidential Diversity Scholarship Award. There was an exceptional pool of applicants for this competitive award. Her submission materials demonstrated her scholarly promise as a Doctoral student and her commitment to diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus and in her future career. Ayako has accepted this award and will join the math department in Fall 2023. The Presidential Diversity Scholarship Award provides a 1-year, full-time tuition scholarship and a one-time refundable scholarship of $7500. The tuition scholarship portion is for instructional tuition only.
BGSU Math and Stats Faculty News
Faculty Complete ACUE Course
Congratulations to Dr. John Chen for the completion of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Course in Effective Teaching Practices!
The 25-week ACUE course provides our faculty an opportunity to explore evidence, in real time, evidence-based teaching practices that are designed to improve student success, student achievement, and close equity gaps. The ACUE course is organized into five major areas of practice: 1) Designing an Effective Course; 2) Establishing a Productive Learning Environment; 3) Using Active Learning Strategies; 4) Promoting Higher Order Thinking; and 5) Assessing to Inform Instruction and Promote Learning.
Dr. Chen successfully completed the ACUE Effective Teaching Practices course and earned a credential endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE). This is a big commitment to teaching and learning for him!
The Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) and Office of the Provost invited the faculty to celebrate their accomplishments at a pinning ceremony in Room 207 at the BTSU on February 10. Dr. Chen attended the ceremony and received the certificate and pin.
Quite a few faculty members of the math department have participated in the ACUE course this year. We look forward to seeing their success!
Five Math Faculty Recognized with 2023 Service Awards
On March 23, the Office of Human Resources in partnership with the Office of the Provost facilitated the annual Service Awards program in Lenhart Grand Ballroom of the Bowen-Thompson Student Union. The ceremony recognized BGSU employees for their length of service to the University. Awards are given in five-year increments, beginning with the fifth year of regular service. In the ceremony, the President and Provost each gave a talk to celebrate the service awardees.
Five faculty members of the math department were recognized for their years of service: Kimberly Rogers (10years), Xiangdong Xie (10 years), Juan Bes (20 years), Diem Nguyen (20 years), and Kit Chan (30-years).
Dr. Kit Chan attended the reception. His comments were displayed on the big screen at the meeting: “It is exciting to see how BGSU grows as a big family of diverse faculty members. I am glad that I am now working in a department of friendly faculty and staff members with a good group of graduate students.”
Congratulations to the awardees in the math department for your service milestones!
Retirements
Steven Seubert
Dr. Steven Seubert retired in July 2022 after 35 years of service to the department and the university. In 1987, after earning his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Virginia, he joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at BGSU. Dr. Seubert had been graduate coordinator for the department managing graduate affairs for three years in 2019-2022. He greatly contributed to the mathematics programs in the department.
Maria Rizzo
Dr. Maria Rizzo joined the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in 2006 and retired in May 2023 after 17 years of service to the department and the university. She has been a committed member of the department contributing to the programs in actuarial and data sciences. Her research record is strong with many publications in very top statistical journals and many citations.
Faculty Attended the CIRM Conference
In March 2023, Craig Zirbel attended a one-week meeting in Marseille, France called "Interplay between AI and mathematical modelling in the post-structural genomics era," hosted by CIRM ("Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques" or “International Center for Mathematical meetings”). The meeting brought together 60 participants from 18 countries.
Dr. Zirbel was invited to give a talk on the relationship between RNA 3D structure and RNA sequence, and how machine learning could be used to map RNA sequences to their corresponding 3D structures. Dr. Zirbel's talk was one of three at the conference that addressed the topic of RNA 3D structure prediction. These talks aimed to introduce the topic to an audience mostly comprised of researchers who use machine learning in protein bioinformatics, an area that has 100 times more available data than RNA research. The conference covered a wide range of topics related to machine learning in protein bioinformatics, including the use of AlphaFold, a neural network model that won the 2018 protein 3D structure competition called CASP by a wide margin.
Speakers at the meeting also discussed the use of AlphaFold to predict not only single proteins but also protein complexes, design protein sequences that fold into desired 3D shapes, and identify binding pockets for therapeutic drugs. The conference also featured talks on multilingual natural language processing and ChatGPT, a model that can write synthesis pathways for making chemicals with desired features for medicine or industry. Many leaders in the machine learning for protein 3D structure and function field attended the meeting, making it a great recognition for Dr. Zirbel to be selected as a bridge between that community and the RNA 3D structure research community. Overall, the meeting provided a valuable opportunity for researchers to exchange ideas and advance their understanding of the interplay between AI and mathematical modeling in the post-structural genomics era.
Student and Faculty Attended the RUME Conference
The 25th Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (RUME) took place in Omaha, NE, February 23-25, 2023, in a hybrid format. The conference is a forum for researchers in collegiate mathematics education to share results of research addressing issues pertinent to the learning and teaching of undergraduate mathematics.
Ms. Camryn Grey attended the conference and presented a joint poster under the supervision of Dr. Kim Rogers, who attended the virtual presentation for posters. As a graduate student, Camryn was very happy to attend a research conference in person, and during the meeting, she communicated with a lot of people out of the department and learned new ideas in research. From the virtual discussion, Dr. Rogers learned that another university also provides the MATH 5900/5910/5920 course sequence as our department has. She also shared about mastery-based grading experiences, new research endeavors, new NSF grant preparation, and the plan to attend a conference on this topic in summer.
Camryn’s trip to this conference is partially supported by the graduate development fund of the department. We would like graduate students to be provided more opportunities to attend similar events, through which the faculty and graduate students can collaborate and create additional research products.
2023 Math and Stat Department Scholarships and Awards
Graduate Excellence in Teaching
Alec Payne
Steven Lippold
Camryn Grey
Ahmad Talafha
Anthony Passero
Outstanding Seniors
Connor Glass
Channelle Lyons
KimAnn Brown
8th Edition BGSU Competition
Beginner section
Minh Nguyen
Terrance Stephens
Advanced section
Nam Pham
Dung Pham
Ethan Riddell
Graduate Scholarships
Eugene and Elizabeth Lukacs Scholarship
Innocent Abaa
Richard Okine
Judyta and Bronislaw Blass Memorial Fellowship
Zeno Madarasz
J. Robert and Gretchen Overman Scholarship
Carsten Betson
Ryan Jarrell
Jason Turk
Alice Wachira
Caleb Khaemba
Anthony Passero
Wenjuan Bian
Enoch Fedah
Yiwen Yuan
Undergraduate Scholarships
Humphrey Fong Distinguished Undergraduate/Math
Elise Snyder
Grayson Tvrdik
Samuel Dunlevy
Frank C. and Florence S. Ogg Memorial Scholarship
Peyton Dolejs
Matthew Fyfe
Connor Harrison
Kenneth B. Cummins Scholarship
Ethan Eskins
Jacob Haines
Ethan Riddell
John L. and William and Maxine Hayden Award
Jordan Yu
Cole Hitchcock
J. Robert and Gretchen Overman Scholarship Award
Mallory Kochanek
Gabrielle Suprun
Adam Volpi
Caitlyn Wimsett
Makenna Young
In Rememberance of Dr. Arjun K. Gupta
Arjun K. Gupta passed away peacefully at his residence in Bowling Green, Ohio on December 25, 2022. He was 84 years old.
Dr. Gupta was born in 1938 in the small village of Purkazi in Uttar Pradesh, India to Amar Nath and Leelavati Gupta. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Banaras Hindu University (India) in 1959, master’s degree in Mathematics from University of Poona (India) in 1962, and doctoral degree in Statistics from Purdue University in 1968. At Bowling Green State University, he was a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics where he worked from 1976 until his retirement in 2015.
One of Dr. Gupta’s areas of expertise was multivariate statistics. Perhaps the most important contribution Dr. Gupta made to this field of Statistics was on Wilks’ Lambda, which was originally developed with his advisor from his dissertation about some central and non-central distribution problems in multivariate analysis. Wilks’ statistics is used in traditional statistics but lack of exact distribution with an easily computable form. In 1963, Dr. Gupta and his advisor were the first ones to derive the exact distribution of this test statistic in closed form, as well as the sum of a finite number of terms.
Two other areas of expertise were in change-point analysis and skew distributions. In collaboration with his doctoral students and collaborators from around the world, Dr. Gupta developed novel change-point detection methodologies based on the likelihood ratio with the derivations of exact distributions of corresponding test statistics which have been commonly used in various academic fields like genetic studies. Moreover, he, along with his students and collaborators, provided a new, more efficient approach to change-point detection based on the information criteria through the view of model selection with its modified versions. Comparing to the traditional likelihood-ratio-based methods, this novel approach improved the issue of computation efficiency. Motivated by skewness of data structures rise in practical fields, such as economics and environmental studies, they also developed different types of skew distributions root from skew normal distributions as well as their theoretical properties. This important work has provided more flexibilities in data fitting purpose, especially for heavy-tailed data.
Throughout his forty-seven-year career and until his retirement, Dr. Gupta’s contributions—in teaching, advising, collaborating, researching, and publishing—to the field of Statistics were vast and significant. He was an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association. One of Dr. Gupta’s colleagues once described him as an "international ambassador of statistics." Regarded as an important mind and voice in the field of Statistics, domestically and globally, he was invited to more than sixty countries to give talks and lectures in colloquia and conferences before his official retirement in 2015. During his travelling, he not only shared and expanded his network with other research collaborators but also played as a statistics missionary and trailblazer who brought statistics to the far reaches of the world. For him, the trips also served the important purpose of introducing the field of statistics in many countries. His international contributions made statistics education accessible to those who might not have had access, changing people’s lives dramatically.
Over the span of his career, he edited and (co)authored more than twenty books and 530 peer-reviewed publications and advised more than thirty Ph.D. students. Dr. Gupta was unshakably committed to education, serving as a mentor to countless students and academics. He was often quoted saying, "Knowledge is power."
When he was asked what advice he would like to give the future generations, Dr. Gupta said, “Education, Education, Education.” He made himself a perfect model to indicate the importance to education. His legacy as a great educator and a prestigious statistician will continue through the impact of his students, his peers, and his colleagues. Dr. Gupta will be deeply missed by Bowling Green State University, students, colleagues, friends and family.
More remembrances of Dr. Gupta can be found at The Purdue Exponent and Mlive.com.
Updated: 09/08/2023 09:14AM