TFBCON2003 (Students)

Cathy Stenson '94 My high school calculus teacher was excited that I was going to Brown. I'm not sure how she had heard about him, but she told me that if I ever got a chance to take a class from Tom Banchoff, I should do it. So I took her advice and signed up for Combinatorial Topology at the beginning of my sophomore year. I remember being taken aback by the first homework assignment, which was something along the lines of, "Here's a cylinder. Here's a Möbius band. Go figure something out." What kind of homework question was that? But I managed to write something, and by the end of the semester I was in love with mathematical discovery. Two summers later I became one of the few people whose first programming language is fnorse. I wrote the demos for the Combinatorial Topology electronic book. I went on to receive my Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University. I now teach at Juniata College, a small liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania. I have to admit I have not had the guts to run a completely discovery-based course, but I try to bring in some elements of that first course that thrilled me so much, and turned me into a mathematician. Cathy graduated from Brown with degrees in Mathematics and Biology. Her final project with Banchoff was to work on the images presented to Dirk Struik for his 100th birthday celebration. After leaving Brown, Cathy persued her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Cornell University, which she earned in 2000. Kathey currently is teaching at Juniata College, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Her web home page shows a recent picture and links to her preprints.

TFBCON2003 Web Pages Created: 11 Oct 2003 Last modified: Oct 31, 2003 11:00:23 AM Comments to: dpvc@union.edu

Matthew Stone '92 Student Assistants of TFB Julia Steinberger '97