Other Professional Interests

Here are some of my professional activities that are not strictly teaching or research.

• Since 2001 I have been an Associate Editor and a member of the editorial board of the American Mathematical Monthly.
• I was Chair of the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America during the 2004-2005 academic year and currently serve as Past Chair of that organization.
• I serve as a consultant to Project NExT. I was mentor to two "sky dots" and am currently the mentor of one "orange dot."
• Jim Turner and I organized the winter Midwest Topology Seminar, which was held at Calvin College on Feburary 26 and 27, 2005.
• During the 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 academic years I served as a rotator at the National Science Foundation. While there I was a Program Director for Topology, Geometric Analysis, and Foundations in the Division of Mathematical Sciences. I took a special interest in the Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) Program.
• I have served three terms as chair of my department: From 1990 to 1994 I was chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Calvin College. From 1997 to 1998 and then again from 2001 to 2004 I was chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
• I have a special interest in involving undergraduates in mathematical research. In the summer of 1992 I was a co-Project Director of an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates site that was run cooperatively by the mathematics departments of Hope and Calvin Colleges. I was co-organizer of a Special Session on undergraduate research at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society. I am a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research and served as a councilor for the Division of Mathematical Sciences of that organization from 1994-1997.
• I am currently co-PI (with Jim Turner) of an NSF-REU supplement. During the summer of 2002, Calvin College student Tom Clark worked with me on a project in polygonal knot theory. We wrote a paper Classifying polygonal chains of six segments that was recently published in the journal Knot Theory and its Ramifications. That research was featured in the Undergraduate Research Highlights of the CUR Quarterly. Calvin College students Jon Dent and John Engbers worked with me during the summer of 2003. They studied knotted 2-spheres in 4-space. They used Kirby Calculus to prove a very interesting theorem that states that certain groups can be realized as the fundamental groups of complements of piecewise linear 2-spheres in 4-space. Jon Dent is continuing to work on the research and a paper should be ready for publication in the spring of 2005. Jim Turner and I are taking a break from student summer research projects during the summers of 2004 and 2005, but we intend to run our undergraduate research program again in the summer of 2006.
• I was one of the guest editors for a special issue of Topology and its Applications that was dedicated to the memory of my advisor T. Benny Rushing. The other guest editors for the special issue are Jed Keesling of the University of Florida and Luis Montejano of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
• I am a member of the organizing committee for the annual Workshops in Geometric Topology. The 19th Annual Workshop was held at Calvin College in June of 2002. The next workshop will be held at the Colorado College in June of 2005. The featured speaker will be Tom Farrell. The workshops are supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
• I have refereed manuscripts for the following research journals: Topology and its Applications, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Proceeding of the American Mathematical Society, Compositio Mathematica, Pacific Journal of Mathematics, Knot Theory and its Ramifications, Michigan Mathematical Journal, and Topology Proceedings.