Institution: Skidmore College

Reporting Year: 2013-2014

Advisor: Gove Effinger

Advisor's Email Address: effinger@skidmore.edu

Has There Been a Change in Chapter Advisor During the Past Year?: no (there will be a new advisor next year)

Permanent Faculty Correspondent: Mark Huibregtse

Permanent Faculty Correspondent's Email Address: mhuibreg@skidmore.edu

Officers: for 2013-2014: President: Katie Kuklewicz ‘15 Vice President: Madeleine Burkhart ‘15 Secretary-Treasurer: Holly Cartwright ‘14

Chapter Website: http://

Number of New Members: 19 (2 faculty)

Number of Continuing Members: 4 (+ faculty)

Activities: One highlight was our mathematical "Family Feud" night in the fall. Four student teams (each with faculty captain) competed; the questions were based on a survey of students in our fall mathematics classes. We had various other events during the year, but none would qualify as "unusual." Our initiation ceremony and dinner was very nice, and featured a greeting from our chapter president via YouTube, since she was abroad for the semester.

Do any of your chapter members plan to attend or present at the PME National Meeting this year? Possibly.

Do you have any news about current students or recent graduations? For example, scholarships or other awards, acceptances to graduate school, paper presentations at conferences, etc.
Here are the citations for our department's major prize winners this year (all seniors): The Robert and Marcia DeSieno Prize for excellence in mathematics and computer science. Adina Micula Adina is a senior majoring in computer science and physics. She has done outstanding research in computer architecture, specifically on the improvement of multiprocessor performance through the use of Speculative Multithreading and pre-fetchers. In physics she has created programs for the better display, management and analysis of physics data, once for an astrophysics project regarding galaxy group membership and another time for a particle collider. In the future she hopes to strengthen more physics procedures through better data analysis interfaces and improved parallel processing. We are very happy that Adina chose Skidmore and wish her the best as she continues forward. Nikolay Yosifov Nikolay has swept through majors in Math and Computer Science with 4.0 GPAs in both and has also had time for a minor in Physics. He consistently shows remarkable problem-solving ability in various departmental settings: as an extremely active member the Skidmore Mathematics Problem Group, as a contestant in an annual inter-college programming competition, and as a partner with Leo Porter doing summer research on dynamic resource allocation in Simultaneous Multithreading Processors. Nikolay has excelled in everything our department has to offer, and we wish him well as he moves on from Skidmore. The Gladys Gillman Taylor Prize in Mathematics is awarded to a junior or senior in mathematics or computer science for outstanding creative work. Yaomingxin Lu [Yow-ming-zin] Yaomingxin has excelled in all her Mathematics courses during her Skidmore years, and she has displayed outstanding independence and creativity on individual projects. As a junior she wrote a very interesting paper on methods, from ancient to modern, of estimating the value of Pi; and this year she has written an excellent honors thesis on the mathematical basis of branching processes as applied to female populations. We have very much enjoyed having Yao among us these four years, and we wish her the very best as she heads off to Ohio State to pursue an advanced degree in mathematics.

If you were awarded a PME Lectureship, Conference, or Prize Grant within the past year, please briefly describe the results.