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Current PGA golfer and 2018 U.S. Amateur champion Doc Redman was a mathematical sciences Bachelor of Science major, with an emphasis in actuarial science/financial math, during his two years here at Clemson University. Redman was not only outstanding on the golf course, he was also outstanding in the classroom. He chose to major in mathematical sciences because he enjoys challenging himself. Read the article on Doc Redman.

Qiong Zhang received the 2020 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. These competitive research awards provide seed money for junior faculty members that often result in additional funding from other sources. The award amount provided by ORAU is $5,000.

The Clemson University School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences announced that Ellen Breazel, senior lecturer in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, and Christy Brown, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Education and Human Development, will be partnering with the College Board as AP Daily course lecturers.

In response to the pandemic and the changing needs of students and educators, the College Board is partnering with college professors from more than 200 universities nationwide to provide free, online AP Daily videos available to millions of students around the world seeking to challenge themselves with college-level coursework whether they are learning in-person, remotely or in blended learning environments.

Breazel’s course focused on sampling distributions and Brown’s course focused on chi-square tests. AP Daily videos will also feature more than 300 of the world’s top Advanced Placement teachers, are each about ten minutes long, and cover every topic and skill that will appear on AP exams. This year, for the first time ever, if an AP student misses a day of class, falls behind, or is simply struggling with a particular topic, that student can get free help anytime, anywhere. Practice questions accompany each video, giving each AP student personalized feedback so they can stay on track to earn college credit. Students can view the videos independently, or AP teachers can assign AP Daily videos as homework, freeing up class time for conversation, connections, and critical thinking, rather than mere content coverage.

“AP Courses and exams offer significant benefits to high school students while preparing them for the educational landscape of college. We have seen firsthand how AP students are able to join the university community and make an immediate impression in their courses,” said Kevin James, director of School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. “Given the impact of COVID-19 on instruction and learning, the college students of tomorrow need innovative programs like this, and we thank Dr. Breazel and Dr. Brown for the critical role they are playing.”

Trevor Packer, senior vice president AP and instruction for the College Board, said, “To have such a talented professor contributing as an AP Daily lecturer is truly a benefit to the students and the entire educational community. As subject matter experts, professors Breazel and Brown will be able to share the depth and breadth of their knowledge with high school students who are up for the challenge. We are thrilled to partner with Clemson, Dr. Breazel and Dr. Brown to help prepare these students for the opportunities provided by higher education.”

At the 2019 and 2020 INFORMS meetings, Clemson Mathematical Sciences alumni Brian Dandurand and Garrett Dranichak were recognized as finalists for Multi-Criteria Decision Making Junior Researcher Best Paper awards.

At the 2019 INFORMS meeting, Dandurand was recognized as a Finalist for the 2019 Multi-Criteria Decision Making Junior Researcher Best Paper Award for the paper entitled “Quadratic Scalarization for Decomposed Multiobjective optimization,” published in OR Spectrum, 38(4):1071-1096 (2016). Practical applications in multidisciplinary engineering design, business management, and military planning require distributed solution approaches for computing efficient decisions for systems performing under conflict and modeled as nonconvex multiobjective optimization problems. Under this motivation, Dandurand develops a theory and algorithms with the goal to preserve decomposable structures of such systems while addressing nonconvexity in a manner that avoids a high degree of nonlinearity and the introduction of nonsmoothness.

Dandurand earned a Ph.D. degree in mathematical sSciences at Clemson in 2013 working with Margaret Wiecek. He has held postdoctoral positions at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and the Argonne National Laboratory. He is currently on the faculty in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

At the 2020 Annual INFORMS Annual Meeting, Clemson Mathematical Sciences alumnus Garrett Dranichak was recognized as a Finalist for the 2020 Multi-Criteria Decision Making Junior Researcher Best Paper Award for the paper entitled “On Highly Robust Efficient Solutions to Uncertain Multiobjective Linear Programs,” published in European Journal of Operational Research, 273(1):20-30 (2019).

In this paper, Dranichak addresses decision making problems in the presence of conflict and uncertainty, which are encountered in many areas of human activity. He models these problems as multiobjective linear programs with uncertain objective functions coefficients and seeks robust efficient solutions, that is, decisions that are efficient in all uncertain scenarios.

Dranichak received his Ph.D. in mathematical sciences from Clemson in 2018 working with Margaret Wiecek. Since his graduation, he has been working as an operations research snalyst at Sandia National Laboratories.

• Read more about this story.

Congratulations to Margaret Wiecek and Mark Cawood for their 2020 College of Science awards.

• Watch a video honoring faculty award winners.

Former School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Ph.D. student Jason Howell was quoted on the employability of math majors. Read the article: What Can You Do With a Math Degree?

Ryann Cartor ’20 has been named a Brown '20 Project NExT Fellow. Project NExT — New Experiences in Teaching — is a selective professional development program for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences.

The Clemson University School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, in cooperation with Department of Management, has launched a new online M.S. program in Data Science and Analytics.

• Watch a video about the program.

The Michael A. Case Scholarship has been established in memory Michael Case, born Sept. 14, 1981 who passed away April 1, 2010. The Michael A Case scholarship for graduate students working in mathematics was established at Clemson and tax deductible donations may be made in his honor through the Clemson University Fund. Visit the Giving page to find out how to donate to the school.

Clemson University School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences alumnus Lucas Waddell was recently recognized as a finalist for the 2019 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice for a project titled “Daily Tutor Scheduling Support at Hopeful Journeys Educational Center.” This work (with collaborator Matthew Bailey) focused on developing a cost-free optimization tool to help Hopeful Journeys, a school for children with autism spectrum disorders, improve their daily scheduling process. The tool has become an integral part of Hopeful Journeys’ operations, saving hours of work each day while providing better and more reliable schedules for the school's students and staff. This project highlights the exciting progress in freely available operations research tools, which are now advanced enough to solve extremely challenging problems for organizations like Hopeful Journeys that traditionally have not had easy access to high-powered analytics. Waddell received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from Clemson in 2015 working with Warren Adams. After graduating from Clemson, Waddell worked for several years as an operations research analyst at Sandia National Laboratories. He is currently an assistant professor of mathematics at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Kevin James and Mark Cawood attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the first JPMorgan-Chase bank in South Carolina to learn that one of the school’s former students James McNally (B.A. ’16) is the first JPMorgan Financial advisor in South Carolina. The new Chase bank is located in Clemson.

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences alumnus Benjamin Sloop was awarded the 2019 South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Excellence in Teaching Award. Sloop is currently a professor of mathematics at Spartanburg Methodist College. Read more about Sloop and the award.

The School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences celebrated the achievements of its top undergraduate students at the annual Undergraduate Faculty Awards Ceremony April 13, 2019. Visit the school’s blog to see a list of the winners.

Associate Professor Lea Jenkins (pictured middle) recently co-organized and helped lead the April 2016 SAMSI “Workshop for Women in Math Sciences.” SAMSI is the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute. More information about the workshop can be found on the SAMSI blog post.

The Greenville News published an article in 2015 on an initiative to lower textbook costs. The article featured faculty members Timo Heister and Leo Rebholz.

From The Greenville News, July 1, 2015

Clemson professor Leo Rebholz disliked every textbook available for an advanced mathematics course he taught for mechanical engineers.

Mostly, he hated the high costs publishers charged for the books.

“I eventually said we're not going to use a book anymore because I don't like any of them and I’m tired of you guys paying, I think it was, $120 for the book we used for a while,” Rebholz said.

So he wrote his own, culled from lecture notes and co-authored by Timo Heister, a mathematical science assistant professor.

The book was just published. He's selling it for $19.90 and expects to make about 20 cents per copy.

And he did it on purpose, not expecting to make any money off the hundreds of hours of work writing, revising and editing the book. He even got into a bidding war between two publishers to see which one could sell it for less than $20.

Rebholz has joined a growing list of college professors who have become fed up with the skyrocketing costs of college textbooks. The College Board estimated students spent $1,225 on books and supplies, including computer software, in the 2014-15 school year. Textbook costs rose 82 percent in a decade, from 2002 through 2012, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office.

But recently, students have begun to spend less on course materials as they turn to other methods of accessing the information they need to learn class material.

Students are spending less on new textbooks, $245 in 2013–14, down 31% over four years, according to market researcher Student Monitor. Annual spending on required course materials has fallen from $701 in 2007 to $638 in 2014, according to the National Association of College Stores. That's because more students are renting or borrowing books or downloading cheaper digital versions, NACS found.

One Clemson professor chose to self-publish a course textbook through Lulu, an online self-publishing company. Students can print out and bind the book themselves.

Another professor chose to go the non-published route and gave students a list of journals to access for free in the library at Clemson or online.

Publishers recognized student concerns as costs began to soar and launched CourseSmart, a digital rental service that carries 90 percent of published textbooks, said Marisa Bluestone, communications director at the Association of American Publishers

They also offer digital versions of textbooks at a discount, black-and-white versions or digital copies of individual chapters, Blueston said.

Publishers are turning away from simply turning a textbook into a .pdf to more interactive digital versions of course materials with quizzes, tests and learning games included, she said.

But the price of textbooks is driven by the cost of putting it together, she said.

“The cost of creating high-quality learning materials … is significant,” she said. “There”s the cost of professional research, writing, editing, vetting, graphics and illustrations, design, production, and distribution.”

At Furman University, two professors' shared distaste for the high cost of traditional textbooks has led them down a unique path.

Chemistry professors Greg Springsteen and Brian Goess have eliminated the need for students to purchase any textbooks for a series of three organic chemistry courses.

For an accelerated introductory course, they use an out-of-print textbook that the professors buy themselves for a few bucks apiece online and lend to students taking the course. For another course, Goess uses a flipped classroom, posting lectures online and using the class time to dive deep into problem solving.

They re-imagined a third course to emphasize biological chemistry and a decade ago began a process to collaborate with students to create their own textbook through an online wiki site.

The pair of professors penned a short introduction to each lecture, then allowed students to write the course materials themselves.

They want to combat the soaring costs of textbooks, but also believe the majority of textbooks are written by authors "far removed from learning the material themselves," Goess said.

“Textbooks tend to give students the idea that scientific knowledge is acquired in an orderly fashion and is then passed down from on-high from people who know what's going on to people who don’t,” Goess said.

That's not how scientific knowledge is acquired though, Goess said. It is instead collaboratively created by teams of researchers, then reviewed, tested, analyzed and revised, he said.

That's how it works in his classes. The first class wrote the material and each subsequent class has added to it, revised the material and corrected errors.

“They realize they are not now responsible just for their own learning, they are in some small sense responsible for the learning of future students in the course, so they are very careful with how they manage their contribution on the wiki,” he said.

Goess has lectured on his approach to coursework collaboration and said he hasn't run into any other professor who has attempted a similar concept. Goess estimates students save $500-$600 in material costs over the three courses.

But, he said, many professors will continue to use textbooks because they're easier. You can either put in a lot of work to create your own low-cost material or a little work to use a higher cost textbook, he said.

“But this can be done by anybody," Goess said. "If you find this intriguing, it doesn't have to cost you a thing.”