Newswise — The University of Mississippi sets a new benchmark in graduate education this weekend, becoming the first American college or university to graduate four African American students with doctorates in mathematics at one commencement.
"Producing four African American graduates with doctorates in mathematics is unprecedented in the United States, with only the University of Maryland coming close, in 2000," said Don Cole, associate professor of mathematics and assistant to the chancellor for multicultural affairs. "And only a few of the nation's larger institutions have produced more African American doctorates in mathematics overall, so this event puts us on par with institutions such as Berkeley and Michigan."
The history-making candidates set to receive their degrees Saturday (May 13) are Joe Anderson of Rosedale, Carla Cotwright of Los Angeles, Brian Williams of Missouri City, Texas, and Adrian Wilson of Jackson.
"As Mississippi's flagship university, it is an important part of our mission to assure that all students have access to the best our university has to offer," said Chancellor Robert Khayat. "The milestone of having four African Americans earn doctoral degrees in mathematics is a tribute to those students, their families and our faculty, current and past."
Tristan Denley, chair of the Department of Mathematics, lauded his faculty for their support.
"Of course, much credit must go to these students' advisers for their work," he said. "But one who deserves special recognition is professor Gerard Buskes, who has been a driving force behind GAANN (Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need) funding. It was these funds and his fine work recruiting and working with many of our graduate students after they arrived here that has had a transforming impact on our program."
Besides his teaching and research, Buskes landed a $400,000 GAANN grant for the department in 2000, during his tenure as department chair. Recently, the university was notified that a new $500,000 GAANN grant proposal has been approved, again largely due to Buskes' diligence, Denley said.
In the department's first GAANN proposal, Buskes pointed out a substantially larger pool of talented minorities in Mississippi than in other states and concluded that they had the potential to "become interested in the beauty of mathematics."
"I thought at the time that if I were to be able to successfully recruit, train and graduate from this talented pool, then I would be able to make some contribution to a slow transformation from Mississippi as a largely agricultural state to Mississippi as a technology-based economy," he said.
Reviewers of the grant applications singled out both of these arguments as being the "visionary part" of the proposal.
"That the success would be as strong as it now turns out to be is beyond my wildest dreams, and I am proud of each of these students now receiving their Ph.D.s," Buskes said.
In comparison to UM's success, Denley pointed out that last year nationwide, only six male and eight female African American students earned Ph.D.s in mathematics. Besides the four African Americans, two more UM students are being awarded doctoral degrees in mathematics this commencement: Brian Davis of Maynard, Ark., and Alice Sanford of Ellisville.
Overall enrollment of minority graduate students in mathematics at UM also has been phenomenal over the last five years, Denley said.
"In addition to the four students slated for this graduation, there are three more minority students who have passed their prospectus and plan to graduate next year, and two more are on track to graduate with master's degrees this summer and are moving on to begin their Ph.D. work."
Hopefully, these graduates will view their UM experiences as positive and will spread the word, so that others may become interested in taking advantage of similar opportunities, Denley said.
"I was pleasantly surprised that the academic atmosphere greatly outweighed any concerns that I had about the university," Cotwright said. "With the support of the Graduate School staff and professors in the mathematics department, I felt that while the Ph.D. in mathematics is a difficult program, it was something that I could be confident and successful in pursuing." Cotwright completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics at California State University at Long Beach and holds master's degrees in mathematics from both UM and Southern University/A&M College in Baton Rouge, La.
James Reid, professor of mathematics and adviser to Cotwright and Williams, said both students have proven themselves during four years of teaching at UM and already have tenure track offers from several colleges, including some in Mississippi.
"Carla and Bryan are well-respected and experienced teachers who consistently receive good teacher evaluations," Reid said. "They work in a difficult area of mathematical research called 'matroid theory,' and their dissertations will result in several papers that are publishable in good mathematics journals."
Williams holds a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from the University of Houston Downtown and a master's from UM.
Anderson, who holds a bachelor's degree from Delta State University and master's from UM, also plans to teach mathematics on the college level, said professor Haidong Wu, his adviser. Anderson's research is in matroid theory and graph theory.
"Joe Anderson has done an excellent job in his dissertation," Wu said. "He has had one paper accepted (for publication), one paper submitted and another paper to be submitted soon. I believe that he will have a very bright future as a teacher as well as a scholar."
Wilson, who also received bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics at Ole Miss, has accepted an offer as visiting professor in the department. This, he said, offers him the opportunity to continue his research in operator algebras. He eventually plans to work on the mathematics of the stock market and develop some useful algorithms.
For more information about mathematics education at UM, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/mathematics/
Editor's note: The information in this release concerning numbers of graduates has been checked against the Mathematicians of the African Diaspora Web site, maintained by the State University of New York at Buffalo, http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/special/index.html
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