Applied Mathematics News

This summer, senior Applied Math major, Caroline Dangel, is completing her Capstone internship at M.G. Brown and Associates, a financial planning firm of Ameriprise Financial.  She is working with a paraplanner who then works under Mel Brown, a certified financial advisor.  Caroline handles client profiles using the Ameriprise software and addresses concerns that clients may have regarding their accounts. Caroline really likes seeing the financial side of business and can see herself pursuing a career in the financial advisory field.  In her words, "I have learned so much already which I feel will prepare me for my potential future career in the finance field."  Caroline has been invited to continue working at the firm part-time through the rest of her senior year.

For her Senior Capstone Internship, Applied Math senior, Darian Hileman is working at Rosendin Electric, an Employee-Owned Electrical Contractor. Darian is getting experience in the accounting, administrative, and IT departments. She is determining which tasks and departments she likes best.  Here's what Darian has shared: "Overall, I am really enjoying my Capstone experience, and I feel like I have already learned so much!

Rising senior Applied Mathematics major Alayna Roesener and math professor, Dr. Ben Wilson, are doing research this summer as part of Stevenson's Summer Science Scholars Research Program (S3RP) in the field of mathematics education. The goal of their research is to understand the effects the recommendations of the 2018 publication, Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics, from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) on high school mathematics education. Catalyzing Change outlines a series of four key guidelines for high schools to implement in order to improve mathematics education including the elimination of student and teacher tracking, focusing on teaching a set of “Essential Concepts”, improving teaching practices that are consistent with research-informed methods, and offering continuous, four-year mathematics pathways for all students. Alayna and Dr. Wilson are interviewing middle and high school math educators, administrators, and curriculum developers to get a better sense of the current state of high school mathematics education. Specifically, they would like to learn how well it aligns with the recommendations of Catalyzing Change and whether or not there are plans to work toward the guidelines laid out in the publication.  This research experience is a great opportunity for Alayna as her career plan is to be a high school math teacher. 

Applied Math senior, Billy Heidel, is completing his Capstone internship at the Maryland Insurance Administration in Baltimore this summer.  He is working in the Compliance and Enforcement Division, gathering and analyzing data to find indicators of noncompliance by any insurance companies.  Outliers are then looked at in greater detail. Billy reports that the office is a low stress environment where everyone is extremely friendly and supports each other in their work. Billy is interested in data analysis as a career path, so this internship fits nicely with that track. 

As part of Stevenson's Summer Science Scholars Research Program (S3RP), math professor Dr. Ben Wilson and rising Applied Mathematics junior, Joshua Lang, are doing research this summer in the field of information theory.  Using concepts such as entropy, they are working to compute the predictability of several musical compositions as a parallel of the work done by Claude Shannon in 1948 in which he computed the entropy of written English. Entropy measures the average information produced by letters in a text based on letter and n-gram frequencies. They are analyzing the predictability and information entropy of various musical compositions and randomly generating new musical compositions based on their n-gram note frequencies.