As an institution that focuses on undergraduate education by faculty members who are experts in their disciplines as well as expert teachers, IUP’s Mathematics Department faculty members have expertise on many areas in the mathematical sciences.
Please note that faculty members are available to offer expert comment to media. To contact one of the experts on this list, please call Michelle Fryling, director of media relations and community affairs, at 724-357-2302 or via e-mail at mfryling@iup.edu.
Dr. Francisco E. Alarcón joined the department in 1992 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. His Ph.D. dissertation examined the lattice of ideals of a commutative semiring. Dr. Alarcón was promoted to associate professor in 1996 and to the rank of professor in 1999. His published research has explored abstract commutative ideal theory, lattice of ideals of commutative semirings, finite semirings, and polynomials over semirings. Besides abstract algebra, Dr. Alarcón has been a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for over twenty-five grants that have brought more than $1,800,000 for various projects related to teaching mathematics with technology, professional development for K-12 teachers, and encouraging minorities to pursue higher education.
In January 2008 he began serving as chair of the Mathematics Department at IUP. Besides teaching at IUP, Dr. Alarcón was an adjunct instructor for three years at Kirkwood Community College (Iowa City, Iowa) and a Mathematics teacher for two years at Colegio Suizo Americano, a private high school in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Current interests for Dr. Alarcón are the use of technology in teaching mathematics, commutative semirings, and, more recently, the mathematics of the classic Maya culture.
Dr. John D. Baker chairs the Elementary Mathematics Education Committee which oversees the M.Ed. in Elementary and Middle School Mathematics Education and the mathematics concentrate for elementary education majors. Having received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in the field of mathematics education, Dr. Baker is one of several faculty members with expertise in the field of teaching mathematics at the elementary and middle school levels. A former school teacher, Dr. Baker has an eclectic research background with books, journal publications, and presentations at national, state, and local teacher conferences on a variety of topics: average, tutoring, election mathematics, technology, assessment, epidemiology, and satellite communications. Dr. Baker has been a member of the IUP Mathematics Department since 1996.
Dr. Kimberly Burch received her Ph.D. in graph theory in 2002 from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include using chemical graph theory to predict physical properties of chemical compounds and determining which graphs satisfy the property of being matching covered. Professor Burch enjoys directing student research presentations whenever possible.
Alfred Dahma joined the department in Fall 2009. He is expecting to receive his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in May 2009. His area of research is Functional and Real Analysis, in particular Lebesgue function spaces, frame theory, and the Schatten class of operators on Hilbert spaces.
Dr. Larry Feldman joined the department in 1985 and received his Ph.D. from SUNY at Buffalo in the area of mathematics education. Dr. Feldman has been the director of the M.Ed. in Elementary and Middle School Mathematics Education and was promoted to the rank of professor in 2005. He was a principal author of Statistics Education for Quantitative Literacy (SEQuaL) from 1992 to 2003, becoming director in 2000. He was also director of Hands-On Mathematics Education for Pennsylvania Learning and Teaching (HOME PLaTe) from 2003 to 2007. These two grants have brought in over $2.6 million to IUP. Dr. Feldman’s current main scholarly interest is issues with integrating hands-on teaching of mathematics with high-stakes tests. He has also been interested in the teaching of problem solving/problem posing, multidisciplinary connections, and gender and mathematics.
Dr. Yu-Ju Kuo joined the department in 2002 after graduating from Arizona State University with her Ph.D. in the area of computational mathematics. Her scholarly interests range from classical applied mathematics to various applications in earthquakes, finance, and operations research. Dr. Kuo has directed undergraduate research projects and currently serves as a cocoordinator for the M.S. in Applied Math program.
Dr. John Lattanzio is a 1990 graduate of IUP where he received his B.S.Ed. in Mathematics Education. In 1993, Dr. Lattanzio entered into a graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh where he received his M.A. degree in 1994 and his Ph.D. degree in 2001 in the area of graph theory. He was promoted to associate professor in 2007. Dr. Lattanzio’s scholarly activities concern graph coloring; in particular, how the chromatic number of a graph behaves upon the removal of certain critical objects.
Dr. Christoph Maier joined the department in 2001. He received his Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University in applied statistics. Dr. Maier worked for nine years as a statistician in the QA/Manufacturing area of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. He is currently the coordinator of IUP’s statistical consulting service, a.k.a. the Applied Research Lab. Dr. Maier is an active member of ASTM Technical Committee E11 (Quality and Statistics). ASTM is one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world—a trusted source for technical standards for materials, products, systems, and services.
Dr. Maier’s research interests include statistics education as well as statistics applied to cancer research, to issues in analytical laboratories, to manufacturing, and to other real-world applications. He consulted with researchers in the Department of Urology and Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh. This collaboration has recently led to several publications.
Dr. Mary Lou Metz joined the Mathematics Department in 2007 after receiving her Ed.D. in Mathematics Education from the University of Pittsburgh. She earned both her B.S. and M.Ed. in Secondary Mathematics from IUP. Prior to coming to IUP, Dr. Metz taught high school mathematics for twenty-seven years and received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching in 1993. Dr. Metz serves as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) representative for Pennsylvania and is the newsletter editor for the Pennsylvania Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (PAMTE) and recently received a grant from NCTM to coordinate the efforts of PCTM to align Pennsylvania’s Academic Mathematics Standards to the NCTM Focal Points. She also organized and is the advisor for the IUP Preservice Teachers of Mathematics (IUP-PTM).
Dr. Metz focuses her research on instructional practices in the mathematics classroom that provide opportunities for all students, particularly those who are underserved, to have access to and success in learning challenging mathematical concepts. She is also interested in fractal geometry and ways in which it can be incorporated into the mathematics curriculum.
Dr. Phil Ray received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Ohio State University in 1987 through a dissertation in Lie Algebra. Presently, he is interested in Ulam’s 3n + 1 number theory problem.
Dr. Edel Reilly joined the Mathematics Department in 2007 after receiving her D.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She earned her M.S. from the University of Wisconsin—Madison and B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from The National University of Ireland–Galway. Prior to coming to IUP, Dr. Reilly taught middle school mathematics for ten years and high school mathematics for three years. Dr. Reilly’s research focuses on mathematics and writing, middle level mathematics education, and curriculum integration.
Dr. Gary Stoudt joined the department in 1992 after receiving his Ph.D. degree from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the area of sequence spaces. Dr. Stoudt has served as Mathematics Department chairperson and as interim dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at IUP and was promoted to the rank of professor in 2003. Since his experience over two summers at the Institute in the History of Mathematics and Its Use in Teaching in 1995-96, Dr. Stoudt has directed his scholarly efforts towards the
history of mathematics, specifically in bringing original source material to a wider audience.
Dr. Janet Walker joined the faculty in 1996 after graduating from Oregon State University. A recipient of the Center for Teaching Excellence Academic Advising award, Dr. Walker works with faculty, students, and cooperating teachers as the coordinator for the Mathematics Education Program. She has presented extensively at state, regional, and national conferences on topics such as using technology in the mathematics classroom, assessment, and implementation of the NCTM Standards in the classroom. Dr. Walker is currently focusing her research in the area of using digital imaging in the teaching of mathematics.
Dr. Greg Wisloski received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004. His area of specialty is set theoretic topology, in particular the characterizations of generalized metric spaces. Recently, his research has moved into the area of mathematical finance, specifically the pricing of convertible bonds.
