The best course I ever took was undergraduate abstract algebra. Although I enjoyed many undergraduate math courses, when I took abstract algebra in the fall of my senior year, I finally found the branch of mathematics that seemed very natural to me. It all made so much sense. I was so enthralled by the material that the fifty-minute class periods only seemed to last ten minutes since the time passed so quickly.
The professor who inspired me the most taught me that, “a theorem a day brings promotion and pay.” In other words, if you work hard, you will reap the rewards.
My bucket list travel destination is to visit all fifty states (and some of the U.S. territories) and all seven continents. I am far behind on my travel to all states, but I have made headway on the continents. One future trip I will plan is to Hawaii, Asia, and Australia. Another will be to Antarctica via South America. That will be all seven continents since I have already visited Europe and Africa.
Research and Teaching Interests: My general research falls under the umbrella of abstract algebra. My particular focus is on nearrings. A natural example of a nearring is to consider functions from a set to itself under addition and function composition. My recent work has been to determine the centers of such nearrings, i.e., the set of functions in a nearring that commute with all other functions under composition.
Although I teach courses at all levels, I have a particular interest in teaching the beginning courses in the mathematics curriculum, e.g., Pre-Calculus, Calculus 1 & 2, and Discrete Mathematics (Introduction to Writing Proofs). I believe that I prepare students for the rigor of the upper-level courses.
