Associate Dean for Graduate Studies
and Professor of Mathematics
Appalachian State University
Boone, North Carolina
Welcome to my webpage. Please follow the links above and on the left to find information my current professional activities. I may be contacted at:
Cratis Williams Graduate School
BOX 32068
Boone, NC 28608
828.262.2130
HirstHP@appstate.edu
shipping address: 287 Rivers Street #232 (UPS/FedEx)
physical location: 232 John E. Thomas Building
Professional activities
In my role as Associate Dean, I am responsible for oversight of graduate education, including admissions, enrolled student services, assistantships and fellowships, graduate records, program of study approval, and degree conferral. I represent the Graduate School on committees across campus and assist the Dean with other responsibilities as needed. I currently serve as Secretary for the North Carolina Conference of Graduate Schools.
In addition to my duties as Associate Dean, my current disciplinary activities include production editor for The Centroid, the Journal of the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics and mathematics editor for the Journal of Computational Science Education (JOCSE). I serve on the Mathematical Association of America's Committee on the Mathematical Education of Teachers (COMET), and on the Education Committees and as coordinator for the Mathematics Workshop sessions for Super Computing 2011 (SC11) and Super Computing 2010 (SC10).
I have served as regional coordinator for the Mathematical Association of America's Preparing Mathematicians to Educate Teachers (PMET) initiative and as co-PI on the NSF funded National Computational Science Institute and Shodor Computational Science Institute. I also help when I can with Project Interactivate and other mathematics and computational science initiatives at The Shodor Education Foundation, on whose Board of Directors I serve.
Selected presentations and publications
- Five entries in The Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Society, S. Greenwald and J. Thomley, Eds., Salem Press, Inc., 2012 (forthcoming)
- How Do You Know? Using Mathematics to Make Decisions, Editor, Textbook and Teacher's Guide, Kendall-Hunt, Inc., 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2011 (Co-Editor: J. Smith; with: J. Bennett, N. Sexton, J. Smith, W. Sprunt)
- Using Sage as a Tool for Mathematics Investigation, Workshop Series at SC11, Seattle, Nov 2011, and SC10, New Orleans, Nov 2010 (with: N. Calkin and D. Warner)
- Increasing the Relevance to and Engagement of Students in a Quantitative Literacy Course, in Current Practices in Quantitative Literacy, MAA Notes #70, R. Gillman, Ed., Mathematical Association of America, 2006 (with: S. Greenwald)
- Using the Historical Development of Predator-Prey Models to Teach Mathematical Modeling, in From Calculus to Computers: Using the Last 200 Years of Mathematics History in the Classroom, MAA Notes #68, A. Shell-Gellasch and D. Jardine, Eds., Mathematical Association of America, 2005
- Math Modeling with Stella, in Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference of Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, Addison Wesley, 2001
- Incorporating Modeling into Undergraduate Courses, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Teaching Mathematics, Samos Greece, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1998 (with: J. Hirst)
See my vita for more information. [Full Text of PhD Thesis]
Personal information
I am married to Dr. Jeff Hirst, also a professor of mathematics at Appalachian. We both love mathematics, cooking, music, science fiction, and living in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. We share our home with our three girls: CC, Nell and Remi, our attack cats.