What do the graduate schools at Carnegie-Mellon and Johns Hopkins, the Wharton School of Business at Penn, and the University of Memphis Law School have in common? They are all schools where some recent (and one not-so-recent) mathematical sciences graduates have continued their studies. Read on, and perhaps you will see a person you recognize!

We were contacted recently by Tiffany Tubbs, Math 1986, who has since married and now goes by Tiffany Kaliko. In May of 2001, Tiffany was living in the Philadelphia area and pursuing an MBA at the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She was and is the Operations Manager of a technology firm in New York City. She has finished her MBA and now lives in New Jersey, where she is married to a patent attorney, and has a 9-year-old son. As Tiffany tells it, "I feel that I owe a lot of my success to my undergraduate education. As you may know, Wharton is known as a finance school, and those without a strong math background struggle. I just wanted to take a moment and say thanks."

Moving forward in time more than a decade, we also recently heard from Melanie Elliot, Math and Spanish double major, 2000. Now married (she is Melanie Elliot Cummings), she describes her current situation as follows: "I'm working for a software engineering company in Lakota, MD., doing defense related work. My main duties are to develop mathematical (and sometimes non-mathematical) algorithms to be developed into some kind of software project, to be used on a military platform. Recently this has expanded into radar systems. Sometimes I have to write the software myself if no one else is available. I'm also still doing a lot of data analysis, comparing some aspect of two military systems, and a lot of research. AND, I am usually in charge of testing procedures on any given project. This involves writing test procedure documents, writing test drivers to test code, verifying the results, etc.". Melanie's company is paying her tuition while she attends graduate school at Johns Hopkins, pursuing a master's degree in applied mathematics. She expects to graduate in May, 2003.

Let's move ahead just a little and catch up with Ram Murali, CS major with MATH minor, 2001. Ram tells us: "I have very pleasant memories of my CS and Math classes under a variety of extremely helpful professors who were also brilliant ‘teachers.' As far as CS courses go, I was fortunate to have gotten a strong foundation in programming and software engineering concepts. And regarding my Math courses, Calculus I and III under Dr. Jamison were very memorable: tough, exciting, challenging and....INTERESTING.

I also worked as a tutor at the Math Learning Center for over a year. This gave me a chance to not only help students but also improve my communication skills and my understanding of the concepts involved. It was a truly educational experience for me. During the Fall of 2000, I worked as a Webpage Designer for Dr. Campbell. This was my first IT (Information Technology) job (even if it were part-time) and got me interested in web development, an area where I have gained more expertise, during my Master's.

After finishing my undergrad, I did my Master's in Information Systems Management at Carnegie Mellon University. I graduated this May from Carnegie Mellon and now, I am working as a Programmer at the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS). This is part of the renowned Institute for Software Research (ISRI) at Carnegie Mellon. My goal is to eventually move towards the Managerial aspects of Information Technology. I plan to do my M.B.A. in a couple of years."

Our last featured alumnus graduated just this past May. You may remember David Holdford, double major MATH and PHYSICS, 2002 who was active in the Cantor Sect. He is now enrolled in law school here at the U of M.. How's that for a change - from math and physics to law! David has this to say about his choice: "There are a great number of similarities between my undergraduate experiences and my graduate ones thus far, and the things I learned as an undergraduate in math and physics make me a stronger student. I know how to think, and mathematics taught me that. Thinking critically is a skill ... There is a common phrase among the faculty in law school that they are teaching us how to ‘think like a lawyer'. This means they are trying to teach us how to critically analyze a problem and come up with all of the solutions, whether there be zero solutions, one solution, or infinitely many. The only difference between the problems (I face) now and the problems I faced as an undergraduate is that the variables are now people ... My case briefs (summaries) always begin with the phrase, ‘Let P be the plaintiff'."

We are truly pleased to hear that our former students are doing well in their quest for quality higher education and rewarding employment. Now it's your turn. We would like very much to hear from any and all alumni of the Mathematical Sciences Department, for updates in future issues of this newsletter. Please, contact us at jcampbll@memphis.edu and let us know how, and what, you are doing.