This is Tammy Hall, who will soon graduate from LSUS as a double major in Mathematics and Secondary Mathematics Education. In this picture, she is about to begin a seminar for the Department of Mathematics. The photographer could have gotten closer.

Part of Tammy's seminar consisted of getting the audience to separate into groups of three to do some actual problem solving. It isn't always easy to get the faculty to cooperate (just ask the Dean of the College of Sciences, Dr. Al McKinney, who is seated in the foreground) but Tammy had them doing as they were told. We predict she'll go far in her profession. In the back, Dr. Gary Boucher (physics), David Fletcher (math student) and Dr. Rick Mabry (math) work together, and the group on the right consists of the duo of Drs. Paul and Cynthia Sisson (math and physics, resp.) with Shanmuka Shivashankara (physics student).

Tammy is giving this seminar as part of her requirements for the B.S. degree in Mathematics. All math majors are required to take the Senior Seminar (MATH 498) in their last year. This is our "capstone course" in which the students show us what they've got. The student in this course does research in an area mutually agreeable to the student and a small committee of math faculty, writes the results in a paper, and presents the results to the department.

We see now two more groups. Dean McKinney is joined in the foreground by Dr. Carlos Spaht (Chair of the Math department) and Jennifer DeBello (math student). The group in the back right corner consists of Dr. Julien Doucet (math), Mr. Rogers Martin (math) and Mrs. Nellie Davis, a teacher at Fair Park High School.

This looks like a lull in the action. Or it might be the part where Tammy discovers that the problem she had posed had a misprint in it! It actually made the problem more ... interesting in some respects. The audience took it in stride, and many were relieved that there may have been a good reason for them to be stumped.

The students have congregated to talk to Tammy. They may be asking Tammy if the seminar was a lot of work, or if she was intimidated giving a talk to the faculty. If she was at all nervous, she surely didn't show it. Tammy has all the signs of being very much at ease in the front of a classroom. We hope and trust she will soon be a great teacher.

Good Luck, Tammy Hall!