April 27, 2012

Here are some of the recognitions earned by students from Davidson's Bernard Society of Mathematics during academic year 2011-2012.  Of the seniors, 21 earned a degree with a mathematics major and several more earned minors or concentrations.

Annual Departmental Awards

The William G. McGavock Mathematics Award to an outstanding senior for promise and accomplishment in mathematics:  Karen Larson '12. 

Karen Larson is also graduating with Honors in Mathematics and her thesis is entitled Unwrapping Rap:  Classification of Drum Patterns in Rap Songs.

The William Vinson Mathematics Award to a rising junior for mastery and promise in mathematics:  Christopher Gorman ‘14.

MAA SE Patterson Prize -- given to the best student presentations at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America.  Karen Larson '12 won this award for presenting research she did in her REU and honors project on clustering drum beats in rap songs. 

Mathematical Contest in Modeling -- the international competition solving open-ended applied problems in mathematics with one weekend of research and writeup. Six Davidson teams competed out of 3697 teams of which only 9% are from the U.S.  Two of Davidson's teams received Honorable Mention designation: the team of Andrew Hanson, Karen Larson, Eric Sawyer and the team of Pete Anderson, Joe Cline, Eddie Dolan.

Mathematical Competitions
Davidson team rank in the national Putnam Competition this year was 136 out of 572 represented institutions.  The five Davidson students who took part were Greg Macnamara '12, Colin Thomson '13, David Benusa '13, and Richard Yan '15.  Congratulations to Colin Thomson as Davidson's highest scorer.  It is a tough exam where 46.5% of entrants scored zero and the median was 1 out of 120 possible points!
The preceding Virginia Tech Regional Math Contest had five Davidson student participants David Benusa '13, Thomas Reith '15, Colin Thomson '13, David Wang '12, and Richard Yan '15. The high score among the Davidson contingent was achieved by first-year student Richard Yan, closely followed by David Wang '12.

Mid-Atlantic Programming Contest -- part of the ACM international contest, this regional competition consists of teams of three students programming in C, C++ or Java to solve several posed problems in a five hour period on a Saturday in November.  Fall 2011 was Davidson's second year in this contest, and we were represented well with two teams that both successfully solved problems; team members were Daniel Bernstein, Cyrus Lala, Greg Newman, Matt Mohorn, Jack DeLoach. and John Radcliffe.

Other Awards, Fellowships and Grants

• Rachel Besnoff'12 is the inaugural recipient of the Kelly Chaston Award from the department of Economics for following Dr. Chaston's passion for using economics to help others.
• Jack DeLoach '12 won the college-wide Agnes Sentelle Brown Award for outstanding character, personality, intellectual ability, and scholarship.
• Ryan Hopkins '12 won the the Tommy Peters Award for the most outstanding male athlete at Davidson.  He is a distance runner in cross-country and track.
• Cheng "Bill" Jin '12 has received a fellowship to attend the Wake Forest University Master of Science in Accountancy program.
• Travis McElroy '12 won the C. Shaw Smith Award which recognizes an individual for their contributions and ability to build community through volunteer service with the College Union.
• Leland Taylor '12 has been awarded an Intramural Research Training Award from the National Institutes of Health.  Leland also received The Frontis Johnston Award for the best thesis of 2012 through the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, which awarded him High Honors in Computational Biology.
• Katie Richeson '11 has received a fellowship to pursue a PhD in biological and biomedical sciences at the Harvard University Medical School.
• Alison Rauh '11 received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to fund her graduate studies in the economics Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago.

Bernard Society Officers -- Congratulations to our newly elected President Colin Thomson '13 and other Bernard Society officers for 2012-13:  Daniel Bernstein '13, Mark Nesbitt '13 and Tucker Whitesides '13.

Congratulations to all!

Posted By: Rich Neidinger