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Why am I interested in mathematics? Why should you or anyone else also
be interested in studying mathematics? Read my
answer. I am an active researcher in mathematics -- I solve previously unsolved problems, prove new theorems, publish papers in peer-reviewed academic journals and travel to conferences to present my work. My research frequently involves students, so if you're a student who's interested in contributing to the current state of the art in mathematical knowledge, feel free to drop by my office, send me an email or an instant message. I am currently interested in non-associative algebraic structures such as quandles and biquandles; these algebraic structures are useful for defining invariants of topological and combinatorial objects. I am also a serious and passionate teacher of mathematics. Mathematical reasoning is an intellectual technology developed over thousands of years for helping us overcome the limitations of our natural intuition; it is the very core of scientific reasoning and underlies nearly all of the greatest achievements of our species. I am excited to be a part of the grand tradition of passing along our hard-won intellectual technology to future generations. I see teaching and research as two sides of the same coin -- teaching a subject well involves asking the right questions and showing the students how to discover the concepts for themselves, while solving problems is only useful if you can communicate your ideas to others effectively. I completed my Ph.D. at Louisiana State University in August 2002 and then spent a year as a visiting assistant professor* at Whittier College. I spent the next three years as a visiting assistant professor at the University of California at Riverside before returning to Whittier College for a reprise year as a visiting assistant professor. This year, I'm spending a year as a visiting assistant professor at Pomona College while looking for a more permanent tenure-track position for next year. My students should read my guide to being a successful student of mathematics as well as my statement on my grading policy. Note that if you can't see a file you're looking for, you may have to hit your browser's "reload" button.
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*The term "visiting" here means "non-tenure-eligible"; a
visiting professorship is a professorship which lasts for a fixed term
(usually one, two or three years) and then terminates, as opposed to a
tenure-track professorship, in which one is eventually eligible to
apply for tenure. It is common these days for researchers to spend several
years working at postdoc and visiting positions before taking a tenure-track
professorship.
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