Department Members, Mathematics, Saint Michael's College

Members of the
Mathematics Department

Here are the members of the Mathematics Department at Saint Michael's College.

We have five members of the permanent faculty.

George Ashline, Assistant Professor

Background. Ph.D. University of Notre Dame
Mathematical interest. Complex Analysis
Home page.
Personal. I am originally from upstate New York and grew up in a town adjacent to Lake Champlain. I enjoy this part of the country and its change of seasons. As an undergraduate, I majored in math and got my first exposure to complex analysis which I really liked. After completing graduate school, I taught for a year at Northeast Missouri State University. I have always liked to help others understand mathematics.

Jo Ellis-Monaghan, Assistant Professor

Background. Ph.D., University of North Carolina
Mathematical interest. Graph Theory
Home page.
Personal. I have an undergraduate degree in studio art (painting and ceramics). I started doing math to give myself a break from all that intensive creative work. Then I discovered that doing mathematical research is also a very creative process, and is even in some ways a visual art. OK, so no one is going to hang my most recent paper in a frame in their living room, but imagining mathematical structures is very similar to the artistic vision that precedes constructing an art object. I still paint and make pots, but mostly to give myself a break from all the intensive creative work of doing mathematics. I grew up on an island in Alaska, and can gut and gill a salmon in under fifteen seconds. I still live on an island, and grow lots of fruits and vegetables.

Jim Hefferon, Associate Professor and Department Chair

Background. Ph.D. University of Connecticut
Mathematical interest. Logic
Home page.
Personal. I grew up in Connecticut, in Ridgefield. Some of my summers in college were spent working at Perkin-Elmer in Danbury, in part on the Hubble Space Telescope (I never touched the mirror, I swear!). After going to UConn for much too long, I taught at Union College in Schenectady for three years and then I had a year at the Groton branch of UConn and in industry, working on programs for submarines. I came to St. Mike's in 1990. My sub-speciality in Logic is in the mathematical theory of computation, the study of what computers can and cannot do. Lately, though, my main occupation is that I spend much too much time hacking around with Linux.

Sue Kadas, Professor

Background. Ph.D. Rutgers University
Mathematical interest. Differential Equations
Home page.
Personal. I really enjoy seeing how various themes and ideas come up over and over again in different mathematical situations, and I like applications---seeing how mathematics can be used to describe many different real life processes. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on some differential equations that describe how patterns can form in biological and chemical systems. I taught for five years at UVM before coming to St. Mike's in 1985.

Lloyd Simons, Associate Professor

Background. Ph.D. McGill University
Mathematical interest. Number Theory
Home page.
Personal. After discovering as a physics major that I didn't like doing error analysis of my labs, I switched to mathematics (where the concept of ``acceptable error'' is unknown). I took a brief couple of years between my B.Sc. and graduate school to see a bit of the world and develop a taste for international cuisine. While completing my Ph.D. thesis, I began teaching full time at the University of Vermont as a visiting lecturer. Though I'm not a big fan of November and April in Vermont, the other ten months in Vermont convinced me to settle here, and I came to St. Michael's College in 1988.
On sabattical in 2003-2004.

We have some faculty members that are not permanent (e.g., adjunct).

Jane Kay, Lecturer

L O'Donovan, Lecturer

K Stone, Lecturer