INDIANA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
DIVISION OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER INFORMATION SCIENCES
DR. MELVIN ROYER DIVISION OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER INFORMATION SCIENCES CHAIR
MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER INFORMATION SCIENCES Majors and Minors MATH E MATIC S
Welcome Greetings from the IWU Division of Mathematics and Computer Information Sciences. In these pages, discover for yourself the strengths of our division faculty, mission, programs, and facilities. We are passionate about our work, our faith, and our students.
Mathematics Mathematics-Interdisciplinary Mathematics Education *Actuarial Science *Statistics *Minor
DISCOVER 765-677-1703 MISTI.BEAL@INDWES.EDU INDWES.EDU/UNDERGRADUATE/DMCIS
the Creator
C O MPUTE R IN FO R MAT ION S CIENCES Computer Science Computer Information Systems *Computer Science
*Minor
Philippians 1:9-11 “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” The purpose of all education is to better understand, love, and praise God in the person of Jesus Christ. We sincerely hope your discovery and enjoyment of new mathematics or computer science will be a step in your life’s journey toward the Creator of all things.
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MISSION & PROGRAMS
IN DIA NA W ESLEYA N U NIV ER S ITY IS A C H R I ST- C E N TE R E D ACA D E M I C C OM MUNITY CO MMIT T ED TO C HA NG I N G TH E WO R L D BY D EV E LO P I N G ST U DENTS IN CHA R ACT E R , S C HO LA RS H I P, A N D L EA D E R S H I P.
CAREER
opportunities A degree in Computer Information
Computer Information Sciences Department The Computer Information Sciences Department will prepare students academically and spiritually for analytical careers by developing current computer expertise, technological research skill, and a Christ-centered ability to help people develop systems-based solutions to real world problems.
CAREER
opportunities A Mathematics degree will prepare you for further study in graduate school or for occupations in business, industry and government where clear thinking, problem-
Sciences will prepare you for further study in graduate school, or for careers in computing or in industry or areas of commerce not computer specific. Some career opportunities include: DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR WEB DEVELOPER
Mathematics Department
APPLICATION DEVELOPER
The Department of Mathematics prepares students for professional lives in mathematics characterized by strategic impact and integrity. We unite the hard skills of critical thinking, mathematical analysis and problem solving with the soft skills of communication and leadership in the context of a thoroughly Christian worldview.
SECURTY ANALYST
SOFTWARE ENGINEER COMPUTER PROGRAMMER SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
solving skills, and mathematical maturity are valued. Some career opportunities include: COLLEGE PROFESSOR BIOMATHEMATICIAN CRYPTANALYST MARKET RESEARCH ANALYST NUMERICAL ANALYST
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
IWU provided me with an excellent framework to begin my actuarial career... the Mathematics Department’s emphasis on technical writing, presentations and group assignments helped me develop communication skills essential to excel in a business setting.
I have started a Bioinformatics Scientist position...and am working on developing single-cell RNA sequencing analysis algorithms to help scientists and oncologists understand the diverse makeup of tumors. I am thankful for the opportunities I was given at IWU to discover my passions and develop the mathematical and personal foundations I have to help me in my career and life.
(Ian is a consulting actuary at Milliman and a Fellow in the Society of Actuaries). IAN MCCULLA
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CARYN WILLIS
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FACULTY PROFILES
FACULTY PROFILES
Meet Our Faculty MELVIN ROYER | PH.D. DIVISION CHAIR PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS melvin.royer@indwes.edu
ANDRE FONTELES | PH.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CIS andre.fonteles@indwes.edu
JOE HOFFERT | PH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF C IS joe.hoffert@indwes.edu
DANIEL KITECK | PH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS daniel.kiteck@indwes.edu
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Dr. Royer joined IWU in 2001. He has taught mathematics at community and technical colleges as well as at the university level and occasionally does volunteer English teaching in Asia. His professional interests include mathematical analysis, dynamical systems, applied mathematics, and post-secondary mathematics education. He and his wife, Barb, enjoy travel, music, church activities, and reading.
BOB MALLISON | PH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS
Dr. Fonteles joined IWU in 2018. Originally from Brazil, he spent five years in France where he obtained his doctoral degree in Computer Science from UniversitĂŠ Grenoble-Alpes and worked as a full-time lecturer and researcher. He now resides in Indiana with his delightful wife, Lya. Dr. Fonteles loves deepening his relationship with Jesus and meditating on His words, learning new languages, playing computer games and studying theology.
SCOTT MCCULLOUGH | PH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS
Dr. Hoffert joined IWU in 2013 from a 2 year university teaching and research stint in Canada. Prior to that he worked in industry and academia for about 25 years before returning to school to get his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 2011. He and his wife, Kendra, have three children. His professional interests include distributed computing, software engineering, and computer science education. He enjoys spending time with his family, reading, helping out on the family farm in southern Indiana (when he can), and riding his bike to and from work.
BECKY WAKEMAN | M.A. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS
Dr. Kiteck joined IWU in 2008. Previously, he lived in Kentucky, graduating from Asbury University and the University of Kentucky. He and his wife, Karen, have five children at home. His professional interests include abstract algebra, history and philosophy of mathematics, and undergraduate student research. He enjoys his family, reading, running, and music.
MISTI BEAL ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT, DIVISION OF MATHEMATICS AND CIS
bob.mallison@indwes.edu
scott.mccullough@indwes.edu
rebecca.wakeman@indwes.edu
misti.beal@indwes.edu
Dr. Mallison is a 1979 graduate of Marion College. After graduate school at Purdue, he spent twenty years as an actuary. He and his wife, Norma, have four adult children and ten grandchildren. In 2003, he returned to academia to complete his Ph.D. in Mathematics, and in 2004 returned to Indiana Wesleyan to teach. He is active in his local church as worship leader and board member and frequently leads worship songs in his classes and at Math Department activities.
Dr. McCullough joined IWU in 2014. Prior to coming to IWU, he lived in the Republic of Yemen where he taught physics and worked in educational development. He is married to Anna, his wife of 35 years, and they have four mostly adult children. He enjoys reading and speaking Arabic, running and playing Ultimate.
Professor Wakeman joined the faculty in 2017 after working in higher education administration and secondary education. She earned her B.S. and M.A. in Mathematics Education and is currently completing her doctorate in Educational Leadership. She is thrilled the Lord led her to Indiana Wesleyan where she can invest in students academically and spiritually. Her husband, Kaleb, is on staff at the River Community Church and she is actively involved in the life of their church. When not on campus or at church, she enjoys spending family time with their daughter Courtney. Misti has been a part of Indiana Wesleyan University since 2002. She is married to Bob, her husband of 34 years. She loves spending time with family and lives just blocks away from her grown children and their families. Her interests include gardening, designing and making things, and repurposing items.
TO L EARN M ORE ABOUT OUR TOP -NOTC H FAC U LTY, V ISIT INDWES . EDU/UNDERGRADUAT E/DMC IS
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Facilities The Division of Mathematics and Computer Information Sciences occupies the first floor in the Ott Hall of Sciences and Nursing. All classrooms are equipped with the latest teaching technology. Students often meet in collaboration spaces which are part of the adjacent office suite. The CIS Department supports cross-platform class projects involving tablet, phone, and robot technologies and CIS servers host Linux, Unix, and Microsoft platforms. The Math Modeling Lab provides a venue to study and collaborate on projects in applied mathematics and statistics courses.
OT T AT RI U M Ott Hall, which houses the Division of Math and Computer Information Sciences, features large spaces for students to collaborate and study.
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DISTINCTIVES
DISTINCTIVES
Student Organizations ASSOCIATION OF COMPUTING MACHINERY MATHEMATICAL ACADEMIC CONSORTIUM SCIENCE CLUB
Internships
Research
Travel
The CSC, CIS and Math Interdisciplinary degrees require an internship, which frequently leads to a job offer. CIS students have interned at a wide variety of companies including the Transportation Research Center, Focus on the Family, Beacon Health Systems, Genoa Healthcare, Rolls Royce, E-gineering, and the FBI. Math Interdisciplinary majors have interned at companies such as Milliman, Western & Southern Financial, Valve & Meter Performance Marketing, Jacobus Energy, and Indiana Wesleyan University Financial Aid.
Mathematics majors do independent research as part of their degree requirements, either through a national Research Experience for Undergraduates or with an IWU faculty member. Students frequently present these projects at professional conferences and several have led to publication. Recent representative projects include “All Possible Solutions to Numbrix Puzzles”, “The Glass Billiards Problem”, “Fisher Price Never Taught us How to Pack Circles in Triangles”, and “New Theorems for the Digraphs of Commutative Rings.”
The division sponsors many travel opportunities to professional conferences and workplaces where computer scientists and mathematicians work. The CIS Department has taken field trips to places such as the FBI, General Motors, Purdue University, Ontario Systems, St. Martin Community Center, as well as various computing conferences. The Mathematics Department travels annually to the Miami University of Ohio math conference, and some students are funded to attend the national AMS/ MAA Joint Math Meetings held annually in cities such as Boston and San Diego. Contacts made during these travels often lead to job and internship offers.
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FACULTY SPOTLIGHTS
FACULTY SPOTLIGHTS
Melvin Royer DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS: USEFUL BEAUTY My favorite research topic is dynamical systems. Consider a sequence starting with first term x0=0.6 and with successive terms given by xn+1=axn (1-xn). If a=2.8, the sequence values soon approach a number around 0.64. If a=3.2, the sequence values eventually oscillate between numbers approximately 0.51 and 0.80. Finally, if a=3.6, the sequence values never have a clear pattern at all. It is not at all obvious why small changes to the value of a result in such different sequences. The incredible structures of some fractals, such as the Mandelbrot Set, are due to very different sequence behaviors resulting from slightly different dynamical systems. I see the beauty of such fractals as a creation of God in the same way He can be seen in the patterns of a sunset or a mountain view. But dynamical systems are not just beautiful. They are frequently used to model biological populations, including of germs and cancer cells. By adjusting values in these mathematical models, scientists can help predict ways to effectively control the spread of diseases.
Becky Wakeman ACADEMIC MOTIVATION My professional interests primarily surround the field of mathematics education. I maintain my Indiana teaching license and stay connected to the teaching field through supervising education practicum students and student teachers. I also find great fulfillment in opportunities to mentor recent math education graduates entering the teaching field. When not working with pre-service and new teachers, I enjoy conducting quantitative research regarding undergraduate students’ involvement in academic and social activities and their academic motivation. Higher education professionals tend to encourage student involvement in structured educational programming, which has been correlated with positive student outcomes such as persistence and academic performance. In this process, it is vital to understand the impact how a student’s motivation and intention for attending college can impact their involvement, persistence, and academic performance.
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Daniel Kiteck GROUPS AND GRAPHS I have mentored six undergraduate research students. It is always very exciting to uncover brand new math! One student is published. He worked with probabilities and “groups.” A mathematical “group” is related to symmetries. (Quick! What are the eight symmetries of a square?) One of my research students explored winning strategies for the game Abalone. Three of my students researched in an area of math called “Graph Theory.” Here a “graph” consists of dots and connecting lines. Two of these students explored graphs where the lines are all the same length. One student found a brand-new graph! These two projects were motivated by a famous unsolved math problem (google “Hadwiger-Nelson problem”) that asks for the minimum number of colors required to color the plane where any two points at distance 1 from each other have different colors. One student was excited to work on a problem from the famous eccentric mathematician Erdös. I always love the adventures when exploring math with my students.
Bob Mallison ACTUARY AND TRUTH SEEKER I am still involved in the actuarial profession. I have also been one of the primary contributors in the development of the Minor in Actuarial Science for Math Interdisciplinary majors who wish to pursue an actuarial career; and I continue to monitor and update the courses for the Actuarial Science minor. My current research interests include resolving the apparent (and illusory) conflict between scientific truth and Biblical Truth, with an emphasis on a more literal reading of the Bible.
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FACULTY SPOTLIGHTS
CAREER OPPORTUNITY
CAREER OPPORTUNITY
Andre Fonteles MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT My technical and research interests include recommender systems, context-sensitiveness, software adaptation, mobile computing and app development. My experience in computer science focuses on crowdsourcing systems, mobile and context-aware applications and recommender systems. Apps that I have independently developed have been downloaded by users more than 500,000 times.
Joe Hoffert COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION My doctoral dissertation and related research focused on distributed computer systems and managing quality-of-service attributes (e.g., latency, reliability) dynamically. Students from IWU and the university where I previously worked have published with me at ACM and IEEE venues. More recently my research has been shifting to support computer science education at the K-12 level especially with the Indiana legislation requiring all school districts to offer a computer science related course by 2021.
Scott McCullough COMPUTATIONAL BIOPHYSICS My research uses high-performance computers to simulate biological systems. I work with students and colleagues in chemistry and biology to show how the motions of atoms and molecules are responsible for biological phenomena. Like art, we make what is invisible visible. To do so, we draw on skills from mathematics, statistics, computer programming, physics, chemistry and biology.
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JOBS? YES!
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment in computer and information technology occupations to add more than 500,000 new jobs from 2016 to 2026, a growth rate of 13%, which is faster than the average overall job growth. Cloud computing, big data and cyber security will drive most of the demand for workers in information systems. Wages reflect this demand, with the median annual wage for computer and information technology occupations at $86,320 in May 2018, higher than the overall median annual wage of $38,640. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/ computer-and-information-technology/home.htm Similarly, job growth in mathematical occupations is projected to grow by over 50,000 new jobs from 2016 to 2026, a faster-than-average growth rate of 28%. Businesses and government will drive much of this growth with an increasing emphasis on the use of big data. Median wages for mathematical positions had a median annual wage of $86,700 in May 2018, higher than the overall median annual wage of $38,640. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/home.htm
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