Associate Professor Stephan J. Curran has returned from sabbatical and will continue as Chair.  Dr. Curran attended the Second Pacific Rim Conference on Mathematics at Academica Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, Jan. 4-8, 2001.  Dr. Curran presented a paper there entitled "Hamilton cycles in Cayley digraphs on Abelian groups."

        Professor Boris Kushner attended the Joint Meeting in January with Associate Professor Marc Mehlman.   Dr. Mehlman, we must note, is on leave from UPJ this academic year and is visiting at the University of New Haven in New Haven, Connecticut.

      Assistant Professor John Thompson served as a grader this summer for the AP Calculus exams.  Dr. Thompson, together with Anita Thompson (Part-time Instructor), also took several of our undergraduates to the Spring Meeting in April at PSU Altoona.

      Assistant Professor Michael N. Ferencak will have a joint paper with A.J.W. Hilton (U of Reading, UK) entitled “Outline and amalgamated triple systems of even index” appearing in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society in 2002.  Dr. Ferencak attended the 32^nd Southeastern Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing, and presented a talk entitled “Outline and Amalgamated Triple Systems”.  A second paper with Hilton, “Pseudo-outline transitive triple systems,” has been accepted to the Proceedings of the 32^nd SEC and will appear in Congressus Numerantium in 2002.

      UPJ has several new faculty to report this year.  Joining the Department as Instructors this year are Jacqueline Baird (M.Ed. IUP) and Elizabeth Hoffman (M.S. IUP).  Joining the Department as a Visiting Instructor is Dawn Cable (M.A. U of Pittsburgh). 

      Upon approval from administration, the department may be filling two positions this year. One should be tenure-track while the other non tenure-track.  Please watch for our ads and flyers.

      The Center for Mathematics and Science Education at U.P.J. will host “Sharpening Skills in the Teaching of Mathematics and Science,” the 12^th Math on Saturday/Science on Saturday program on Saturday, 6 October 2001.  The program features 42 workshop sessions aimed primarily at K-12 mathematics and science teachers and administrators.  Instructor Terry Shustrick will be hosting two of the workshops.  For further information contact Nina Girard, Assistant Professor of Education and Director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education (www.pitt.edu/~sosmos).  Funding has been provided via a grant from the Dwight D. Eisenhower program.

      Terry Shustrick was also part of a team from UPJ that will be part of a grant from NSF being administered by AASCU.  The import of the grant is the improvement in the mathematics preparation of future teachers for the elementary schools.  The team traveled to San Diego in June for a one-week working seminar and will begin to implement our proposal this fall.