shelton@southwestern.edu MBH 143

Associate Professor Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Southwestern University Georgetown, TX 78627

Phone: (512) 863-1489 or X1489 on campus More contact info and my professional interests

SOME M O R E       U N D E R G R A D U A T E       R E S E A R C H

I have been supervising the math capstone, the Senior Seminar in Mathematical Modeling in the Fall for over 20 years.
I have also supervised undergraduate summer research and Independent Studies.
Students have presented at Texas MAA, MathFest, JMM, and TUMC .
I have also aided students at these conferences whose research was with other faculty members.

Five SU students presented at the 2015 TUMC at The University on Texas at Tyler Oct 9-10, 2015 -- over Fall Break! The students shared preliminary results of the first seven weeks of work on their math capstone projects. ♦ Jade Garza "Models of Marfan Syndrome". Math major, CS minor. ♦ Michael Gebhardt "A Calling for Success". Math major, minors in Business and Exercise and Sports Studies. ♦ Julia Sykora "Old Math Model Had a Farm: The Math Behind Chicken Farms". Math major, Theatre minor. ♦ Christi Ho "Adventures in Art: A Mathematical Analysis of Generative Line Drawings". Majors in Computational Math and in Art. ♦ Eric Oden "The Mathematics of Chaos: An Exploration of the Double Pendulum". Majors in Computational Math and in Physics. Dr. John Ross, Visiting Assistant Professor, moderated a session. There were 21 other student presentations scheduled from fifteen other institutions, and over 100 student attendees. Southwestern had the largest number of students who presented from a single institution. Funding for the SU group was provided by Southwestern's Fleming Student Travel Fund and SU's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.

I guided two SU students in Southwestern's 2015 SCOPE. ♦ Yinlin Dai and Emma Groves spent eight weeks studying difference equations. Groves presented their work at the 2015 MathFest in Washington, DC, and it won an Outstanding Student Presentation award! There were 141 student presentations by more than 200 speakers representing over 100 institutions. Groves' attendance at MathFest was supported by an MAA Student Travel Grant, an SU Fleming Student Travel Grant, and Shelton's SCOPE Faculty-Student Project fund.

Ten mathematics/computational mathematics majors attended the TxMAA in San Antonio in April 2015, with nine competing in the Calculus Bowl and giving presentations at the conference. I supervised the following: ♦ Bonnie Daniel: "This is a Man's World: The Standing of Women ⇔ The Security of the State" won the Jade Garza, Julia Sykora, William Soller and Lorena Roque presented "Permutations as Music." ♦ Danielle King and Charles Payne presented "Measles: from data to simulation" based on the 2014 SCOPE Research.

At the 2015 JMM in San Antonio, ♦ Matthew Miller gave a poster presentation, "Scoring Cardiac Health: A Model of the Relationship between Diet and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease" from a Summer 2014 Internship at the McDevitt Research Group at Rice University, continued in the Math Capstone under Dr. Shelton. Miller was a Computational Math Major, who graduated in December 2014. ♦ Senior math major Robert Lehr also attended the JMM.

Five SU students presented at the TUMC at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Oct 17-18, 2014. ♦ Heather Gronewald presented "Computing Cophylogenetic Invariants" from the NSF REU at the Summer 2014 Winthrop University, continued as an Independent Study with Dr. Shelton. Gronewald is a double major in Math and English. Four students discussed preliminary results of their math capstone projects: ♦ Matthew Miller presented the talk also presented at the 2015 JMM. ♦ Robert Lehr presented "Noisy Clustering Analysis of Landfill Distribution." Dr. Anwar Sounny-Slitine taught Lehr GIS techniques. Lehr is a Math major. ♦ Matthew Chaltain presented "Earnings Surprise Effect on Stocks." Chaltain is a double major in Math and Business. Dr. Grooms and Dr. Early in Economics gave valuable guidance and input on this project. ♦ Megan Myers presented "A Place For All People: Planning for Growth in Summer Camp Enrollment." Myers is a double major in Math and Education. Her work is a Civic Engagement Project for Lutherhill Ministries. I supervised these capstone projects and served as the faculty mentor at the conference. Each of these students will present further research in December on campus. ♦ Julia Sykora , a math major with a Theatre minor, and ♦ Jimmy Alleyn , a Chemistry major, also attended the TUMC. There were 23 other student presentations from twelve other institutions, and approximately 200 student attendees. Funding for TUMC is provided by NSF grant DMS-0846477 through the MAA Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conferences program, www.maa.org/RUMC. Additional funding for the SU group was provided by Southwestern's HHMI Student Travel Fund and SU's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.

At MathFest in Portland, OR Aug 6-9, 2014, my SCOPE students ♦ Danielle King and CJ Payne presented "The Measles Are Coming! The Measles Are Coming!" in the MAA student paper session. ♦ Heather Gronewald presented two papers, including one at a session that is generally reserved for faculty presenters. "A Student's Perspective on Undergraduate Research," was part of a session on "Undergraduate Research in Mathematics: How, When, Why." Gronewald discussed her experiences with a classroom-based semester of applied modeling she did under Shelton, her participation in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, and her participation in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. ♦ Gronewald also presented "Computing Cophylogenetic Invariants" in the PME student paper session. This was based on her summer REU experience at Withrop University. ♦ Robert Lehr presented a talk at the PME session based on research he did in Spring 2014 under the direction of President Ed Burger. Their research looked at specific properties of the Fibonacci sequence, and they recognized an interesting pattern when applying a known theorem to the sequence. Their work established this pattern in an explicit algorithm. Lehr's paper is titled "An Irrational Decomposition of Generalized Fibonacci Numbers." ♦ Gronewald and ♦ Lehr each won a Pi Mu Epsilon award! There were 90 PME talks, 16 awards at MathFest. Funding for attendance was provided by Southwestern's HHMI program, MAA, and PME.

I guided two SU students in Southwestern's 2014 SCOPE , or Summer Collaborative Opportunities, research program as part of the HHMI-Southwestern Inquiry Initiative. ♦ Danielle King and CJ Payne spent eight weeks studying difference equations. See above for their MathFest '14 presentation.

Senior Southwestern mathematics majors presented their research at the annual meeting of the TxMAA held in Laredo, April 3-5, 2014. ♦ Brian Cohen and David Vaden presented "Magic Graphs," under the supervision of Drs. Alison Marr and Kendall Richards. ♦ Robert Lehr presented "An Irrational Decomposition of Generalized Fibonacci Number," supervised by President Ed Burger. ♦ Andrew Banister presented "Can You Make Change by Increasing Minimum Wage?" overseen by me. ♦ CJ Payne also attended the conference. There were 21 talks by undergraduates. Funding for attending the TxMAA was provided by Southwestern's Fleming Student Travel Fund and SU's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. I also attended the Texas Association of Academic Administrators in the Mathematical Sciences, served as the MAA Liaison, and was selected to serve as Chair-Elect of the Texas MAA.

At the 2014 JMM in Baltimore, MD ♦ Heather Gronewald presented her Capstone Project (3rd version) at the Undergraduate Poster Session. There were more than 500 student authors orally presenting over 300 posters.

At the 2013 MathFest in Hartford, CT, ♦ Yvette Niyomugaba presented "Recycle Plastic to Save our Planet!", the 6th extension of her Capstone Project, at the Pi Mu Epsilon Student Paper Session. I served as a judge in the MAA Student Paper Session. We attended some great talks!

At the 2013 JMM in San Diego, Yvette Niyomugaba presented her Capstone Project (4th version) at the Undergraduate Poster Session and won one of the 50 "Outstanding Presentation Awards". There were more than 500 student authors orally presenting over 300 posters.

Mathematics capstone students presented 9 of the 25 student talks at the 8th annual TUMC , Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference 2012 at Stephen F. Austin state University Oct 26-27. ♦ Yvette Niyomugaba, "Recycling toward a Better Earth Through Math." Alternative Research Project, continued from summer Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Project. (2nd version) From the Senior Seminar in Mathematical Modeling: ♦ "Zoe" Van Pham "Math asks: 'Water You Doing, Georgetown?'" Continued from summer Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Project. (2nd version) ♦ Zachary Anglin "School Meals: How Much is Too Much?" ♦ Nina Baccam "Look at Them Grow: A Mathematical Model of Cancer cell and T cell Populations" ♦ Ben Cardiff "Distractions Can Be a Real Pain" ♦ Andy Clarage "Love All: Mathematical Tennis" ♦ Yasmin Leon "Modeling the Spread of HIV" ♦ David Scott Ryan "Math Bites: Predator-Prey Models of Various Species" ♦ Sara Watson "A Finely Tuned Model" It was my honor to have been the faculty advisor for each. Funding by SU Math&CS Dept, NSF grant DMS-0846477 through MAA RUMC, SFA College of Sciences and Mathematics, SFA Dept Math & Statistics.

Niyomugaba and Pham worked under my supervision for eight weeks during Summer 2012 on a Faculty Student Research Project at SU on two very different undergraduate research projects on Environmental Mathematics. We attended MathFest in Madison, WI where the students presented their papers. ♦ "Zoe" Van Pham presented "Water, Population, and Temperature in Georgetown, TX" ♦ Yvette Niyomugaba presented "Recycling Toward a Better Earth Through Math" These were the first versions of their work in these topics, which they continued throughout the following academic year.

And there were more student presentations at conferences before this!