Organizers

Alicia Sevilla

Alicia Sevilla is Professor of Mathematics who has taught at Moravian College since 1984 and served as Department Chair for the period 1998-2004.  She is a graduate of Universidad de Cuyo (San Luis, Argentina) and her doctorate degree is from Cornell University. Her mathematical interests are in the area of algebra and number theory and their applications.  She has taught a wide range of mathematics courses including Quantitative Reasoning, Mathematics for Elementary Teaching, Calculus with Precalculus Review, Calculus I, II and III, Linear Algebra, Modern Algebra, Discrete Mathematics and Cryptography.

She participated in two FIPSE funded projects that resulted in the implementation and dissemination of courses that integrate calculus with precalculus review. More recently, she participated in a project funded by the National Science Foundation that led to the creation of a new course in quantitative reasoning.  She is a co-author of the textbooks A Companion to Calculus (1995, 2006) and Quantitative Reasoning: Tools for Today’s Informed Citizen (2007). 

She is a member of the MAA/EPaDel Section and served as the Section Coordinator of Student Chapters from 1999 to 2006.

Kay Somers

Kay Somers is currently professor of mathematics and in her 26th year of teaching at Moravian College.  She received her B.S. degree from Ursinus College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  Her mathematical interests involve Operations Research and other areas of applied mathematics.  Before coming to teach at Moravian, she worked in industry as an operations research analyst and in state government as a statistical analyst.   She has taught a wide variety of mathematics courses at the college level, including Mathematics for Elementary Teaching, Elementary Statistics, Mathematics of Social Choice, Calculus I, II, and III, Advanced Calculus, Linear Algebra, Operations Research, Numerical Analysis, and Mathematical Statistics.

She is a co-author of two textbooks: A Companion to Calculus (1995, 2006) and Quantitative Reasoning: Tools for Today’s Informed Citizen (2007). This second text was developed with the help of a grant from the National Science Foundation. She served as Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Moravian from 1992-1998; from 1998 to 2004 she was chair of the College committee responsible for implementing the new general education curriculum and Director of General Education. She served as an officer of the Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) from 1989 to 1999, including terms as President and Governor. She currently serves the national MAA on several committees including the Classroom Resource Materials Editorial Board and the Committee on Undergraduate Student Activities and Chapters.

She received the Lindback Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching at Moravian College in 1990 and the MAA’s Meritorious Service Award in 2006. 

Speakers

Caren Diefenderfer

Professor Diefenderfer grew up in Allentown, PA and attended public schools. She went to Smith College, intending to major in either Mathematics or Spanish. Junior year she opted to go to Dartmouth on the 12-College Exchange and during that year, Dartmouth made the decision to go coed. Ms. Diefenderfer stayed at Dartmouth for her senior year and graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a major in mathematics.

Her graduate degrees (M.A. and Ph.D.) are from UCSB (University of California and Santa Barbara). After graduate school she moved to Roanoke, VA when she joined the faculty at Hollins. She has been at Hollins for her entire career. Hollins remains an undergraduate, liberal arts institute for women and offers several master’s programs.

In recent years, Professor Diefenderfer has been directly involved with two professional activities – AP Calculus and Quantitative Reasoning (QR) Across the Curriculum. She just completed her fourth (and final!) year as Chief Reader for AP Calculus. She was instrumental in establishing the QR program at Hollins and is the past chair of the Special Interest Group for Quantitative Literacy (SIGMAA QL) of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).  

Maura Mast

Maura Mast received her PhD in mathematics in 1992 from the University of North Carolina.  Her research field is differential geometry, and she is also interested in mathematics education and teacher preparation.  She has been at the University of Massachusetts Boston since 1998, and is currently an Associate Professor.  She has been the Director of Quantitative Reasoning at UMass since 2002.  In this role, she has coordinated the Quantitative Reasoning course and requirement at UMass Boston and has spoken and written about this work.  Most recently, she taught an Honors course on "Mathematics and Democracy".  She is a member of SIGMAA-QL, the special interest group of the MAA on Quantitative Literacy, and has been chair of this group since February 2006.  She is also the secretary of the Association for Women in Mathematics and a member of the Joint Committee for Women in Mathematics.

Bettie Smolansky

Bettie Smolansky is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department and is concluding her 43rd year as a member of the Moravian College faculty.  She earned her baccalaureate degree at Lenoir-Rhyne College (Hickory, NC) in 1962, her M.A. at Duke University in 1964 and returned to graduate work in mid-career, earning her Ph.D. in Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University in 1984.  The following year her dissertation received the Goodman-Malamuth Award for Methodological Innovation and Excellence from the American Association of University Administrators.

Her primary areas of teaching in sociology are research methods (basic and advanced) and structured inequality (race, ethnicity, class, and gender).  In addition to these concentrations in sociology, Dr. Smolansky has team taught in two multi-disciplinary courses, Global Issues and Quantitative Problem Solving (with Dr. Somers).  She is a co-author (with Dr. Somers and Dr. Jack Dilendik) of two articles that resulted from the latter experience.

Dr. Smolansky has collaborated with her spouse, Dr. Oles Smolansky, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Lehigh University, on numerous articles and chapters, as well as two books on international affairs.  The first of these, The USSR and Iraq, was awarded the 1992 Marshall Shulman Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.  They are currently at work on a third volume on post-Cold War relations between Russia and Iraq.

She received Moravian’s Lindback Award for distinguished teaching in 1978, and her undergraduate alma mater honored her with its Distinguished Alumnus/a Award in 1995.