June 29, 1999

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Harry Allen, Phil Huneke and Yung Chen Lu are the recipients of this year's Teaching and Service Awards. All three have a history, going back many years, of involvement with course design, experiments in teaching, and of significant service contributions to the Department and the University. Each has consistently demonstrated initiative and leadership by undertaking projects which improve the life of the Department, its faculty and students. It is not possible to list in a short note such as this, all the many contributions these three have made. However, I'll try in each case to illustrate the overall contribution by picking out a few important examples.

Harry Allen has demonstrated great breadth of service to the Department and the University and performed this service with persistence and vigor. He has helped raise funds for a number of projects, for example over $70,000 from University and private sources during the early 1990's to recruit and support students from the former Soviet Union. He has played active role in faculty governance for nearly a decade through work on the University Senate, Faculty Council, the University Fiscal Committee, and the Budget Restructuring Coordinating Committee. He has been Chair of Faculty Council and is currently Chair of the Fiscal Committee. It is important for the Department to be represented and have a voice in College and University decision making. Furthermore, through participation in campus-wide forums, information about directions the University may take flows back to the Department. To a great extent, Harry has played this role for the Department of Mathematics.

Harry has been instrumental in developing and managing the Mainstreaming College Mathematics Project (MCM). This project takes students who would normally test into a remedial course like 050 or 075 and places them in Math 104, with a twist. There is a compulsory, supplemental 2 hour course called Math 103 in which students learn study skills, e.g., how to read mathematics texts carefully, how to ask themselves questions to suggest initial courses of action in problem solving, how to review old material and integrate it into their current studies, etc. Data on student outcomes in MCM, which has been accumulating since the project started in 1994, indicate two encouraging effects. First, despite having performed less well on the placement test, MCM students do at least as well in 104 as conventional students. Second, MCM students tend, subsequently, to pass more math courses with a grade of C- or better than conventional 104 students. These outcomes will have a positive impact on retention of students and widen the scope of their education and career opportunities.

Phil Huneke has provided consistent, valuable service to the Department on a number of fronts. From 1989-1995 he was an Instructor in the OSU Young Scholars Program, an outreach and recruitment program for minority students. He has long been a champion of tutoring services for undergraduates and as Vice Chair from 1979-1996 was instrumental in establishing, maintaining and staffing our old tutor rooms. He was an early supporter of the Mathematics and Statistics Learning Center (MSLC) and served as Acting Director in 1997-98. Phil was a member of the search committee to find a permanent Director and he currently serves on the oversight committee for the MSLC renovations in Cockins Hall. From the great many works of service Phil has performed, perhaps none is more visible than the designs for the slate floors in the elevator lobbies of the Mathematics Tower (developed with Henry Glover) and the brickwork on the pedestrian mall outside. The former depict tilings of the plane which increase in complexity as the floor number goes up. The latter illustrate a number of theorems in topological graph theory which were proved by members of our faculty. We can all take daily pleasure from Phil's successful efforts to merge mathematics and public art.

Over the last five years, Phil has been actively involved in curriculum design and pedagogical experiments. He served as Chair of the Task Force on Business Mathematics Courses (1995-97) which redesigned Math 130/131/132 in consultation with the College of Business. Along with Sia Wong and Thomas Kerler, he attended a Cooperative Learning (CL) workshop in summer 1998 and used his experience there to design a CL workshop for Math 131 lecturers and TA's. Phil, along with others, developed a large number of task sheets and used them to implement the new teaching style in autumn 1998. While it is too early to tell yet whether Cooperative Learning will prove successful in terms of student learning and performance, it is vitally important for the Department to try new approaches to teaching its large service courses. CL is an interesting and ongoing pedagogical experiment which could not have been attempted without Phil's initiative and help each step of the way.

Yung Chen Lu has been deeply involved for many years in student recruitment and advising at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has been a member of the Graduate Recruitment/Graduate Admissions Committee since the early 1970's and in recent years has been its Chair. Along with other colleagues and staff he has worked hard to ensure the best possible incoming class of graduate students. This entails a huge amount of work which is mostly hidden from view: updating and circulating the Department poster and Peterson guide, reviewing and sorting hundreds of application files and records, conducting telephone interviews with international students often at odd hours of the evening or morning, arranging campus visits, preparing and presenting files for the University Fellowship competition, etc. Then, come summer quarter, Yung Chen helps conduct the teacher training course for all prospective TA's and is the default advisor to most new students. Each year he advises 20 to 25 first and second year students until they find other faculty to work with (and this is not counting the 10 or so undergraduates he advises each year!). This is important, daily work from which the whole department benefits.

Yung Chen has been a member of the Honors Committee for 14 years, served continuously from 1986 to 1996 and was Chair from 1992-1996. From 1994-1998 he served on the ASC Honors Committee, representing the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The workload of this committee is heavy as it is responsible for approving Honors courses from all departments, approving individual honors contracts, evaluating honors projects and awarding prizes and distinctions. Inside the Department Yung Chen has helped develop Honors courses in topology and in differential geometry. He has also helped shape the H190 sequence, a sequence he has taught frequently and well. That the Honors Program is acknowledged by the University community to be the best Honors program at Ohio State due is in part to Yung Chen's care and devotion.

Best wishes,

Peter March
Professor and Chair

Department of Mathematics