Loi Booher was selected from a pool of 55 highly qualified applicants to fill a lecturer position in the Mathematics Department. Booher received her Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics in 2002 and Master of Arts in Mathematics Education in 2005 from UCA. She has been an instructor in the department for the past three years and has taught a wide range of general education mathematics course. Prior to joining UCA, she worked for the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation in Little Rock.
Dr. Linda Griffith, professor of mathematics, was selected by the Arkansas Department of Education to represent Arkansas at the Association of Mathematics Teachers Educators Conference held on June 22-23 in Louisville, KY. The main focus of the conference is Elementary Mathematics Specialists State-Level Certification. Dr. Griffith and Dr. Diana Pounder, Dean of the College of Education, were among the five members who represented the Arkansas team.
Dr. Linda Griffith, professor in the Mathematics Department, received a grant extension of $75,934 to continue her work on formative assessment target testing in Mathematics, Literacy and Science. This is the third extension of the grant, which is funded by the Target Interim Assessment Consortium consisting of the Southeast Arkansas Education Services Cooperative and other partnering Education Services Cooperatives.
The Biology Department honored recipients of the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award on May 6, at Beaver Fork Lake. Geoff Smith was recognized for spearheading a collaboration with the UCA Writing Center to improve writing by students in freshmen biology courses. Justin Wright, who served as a teaching assistant for Principles of Biology I and II, provided invaluable assistance and guidance; taught the first lab of the week and helped train other lab instructors.
Dr. Barbara Clancy, associate professor of biology, gave an invited plenary presentation at the 26th International Neurotoxicology Conference held in Portland Oregon June 6-10. The focus of the conference was the potential role of environmental exposures and gene environment interactions in the development of ADHD, schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimers, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease. Dr. Clancy’s research is essential in relating studies done in experimental species to human applications.
Dr. Ramesh Garimella , chair of the Mathematics Department, gave a research presentation “On Solutions of an Operator Equation” at 2010 Great Plains Operator Theory Symposium held on the campus of the University of Denver in June. Approximately seventy mathematicians from around the world, all specialists in the area of operator theory, presented their research at this annual event.
Dr. Ramesh Garimella, chair of Mathematics and Dr. Jean McGhee, associate professor of Mathematics, represented UCA at the College Ready Workshop held on the campus of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in May.The workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation and was organized by the Dr. Bernie Madison, professor of Mathematics at UAF. Participants discussed several timely topics that included the Common Core Standards, inquiry-based instruction and Mathematics Teacher Education in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Also, Dr. Garimella participated in the Enhancing Content for Comprehension in Undergraduate Mathematics Institute, organized by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in May.
Dr. Weijiu Liu, assistant professor of mathematics, presented a research paper “An Output Feedback Control for Store-Operated Calcium Entry and Extracellular Calcium in Yeast Cells”at the 2010 Chinese Control and Decision Conference held in Xuzhou, China in May. The purpose of the conference was to create a forum for scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world to present the latest advancements in Control, Decision, Automation, Robotics and Emerging Technologies.
Dr. Laurie Warren, a lecturer in the Biology Department, and biology graduate student Ram Pandey attended the annual Mid-South regional meeting of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry held in Memphis in May. Ram was awarded the second place poster award with a $250 cash prize for his presentation entitled “Survival and precopulatory guarding behavior of Hyalella azteca (Amphipoda) exposed to nitrate in the presence of atrazine.”
Dr. Sinan Kockara, an assistant professor, his graduate student Vincent Yip, and undergraduate student Brendan Lee from the Computer Science Department published an article in Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is a top-ranked journal published by Oxford University press. Their research paper was entitled “A soft kinetic data structure for lesion border detection.” In this research, they developed a new algorithm that automatically and accurately finds borders in skin cancer lesion images.