Philip Hotchkiss

Associate Professor of Mathematics
Westfield State College

Office Info

Phone: (413)572-5575

Office: Wilson 411L (419)

Fall 2008 Office Hours:
Monday	1:30 - 3:00 pm
Wednesday	10:30 - 11:30 am
Thursday	1:00 - 2:30 pm
And by appointment.

E-Mail Address:

photchkiss AT wsc.ma.edu

Snail Mail Address:

Department of Mathematics
Westfield State College
Westfield, MA 010186

Red Cross Disaster Relief September 26 - October 19, 2005

• During my Sabbatical in Fall 2005 I was fortunate to be able to volunteer to help out with hurricane disaster relief through the American Red Cross.  I spent three weeks in Monroe, LA at a long term shelter.  You can find a description and some photographs about my experience here.
  

Cool Math Sites of the Week

• KaBol (Knot a Braid of Links) is a "cool math site of the week" sponsored by the Canadian Mathematical Society.
  
• Math Forum Trigonometry and Calculus Problem of the Week
  

Course schedule

Education

• B.S. Mathematics, Union College
  
• M.A. and Ph.D. Mathematics, State University of New York at Albany
  
  

Previous Positions

• Lafayette College 1994 - 1995
  
• Rhodes College 1995 - 1996
  
• The University of St. Thomas 1996 - 1998
  

Research/Teaching Interests

• My area of research for my dissertation was Geometric Group Theory. For preprints in Geometric Group Theory and other fields, follow the link to the Front for the XXX Mathematics Archive
  
• I am currently involved in Project NExT Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) is a program for new or recent Ph.D.s in the mathematical sciences who are interested in improving the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics.
  
• I am also interested in Math Education and the preparation of future teachers. The links below are for the NCTM standards and the Massachusetts Frameworks.
  
  • NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics is an electronic version of the Standards 2000.
    
  • The current Massachusetts Mathematics Frameworks were updated by the Board of Higher Education in November 2000.
    
• The Westfield State College Writers Guide is part of an effort to form stronger connections between the ideas, concepts, and strategies learned in English composition classes and the writing done in mathematics and the sciences at Westfield State College.
  
  

Papers

• The Boundary of a Busemann Space, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 125 (1997) pp. 1903-1912.
  
• First-Year and Senior Seminars: Dual Seminars=Stronger Mathematics Majors, with Julian Fleron, PRIMUS, 11, No. 4, (2001) pp. 289 - 325.
• It's Perfectly Rational, The College Mathematics Journal, 33, No. 2, (2002) pp. 113 - 117.
  
• The Growth of Trees (a student research project), with John Meier, The College Mathematics Journal, 35, No. 2, (2004) pp. 143 - 151.
  

Books

• Discovering the Art of Knot Theory (manuscript)
• This book is written for mathematics for liberal arts courses and is one of a proposed series of ten texts that are part of a project entitled Discovering the Art of Mathematics that I am working on with my colleagues, Drs. Julian Fleron, Volker Ecke, and Christine von Renesse.  More information on this text and the project can be found here.
  

Mathematics Links

• American Mathematical Society (AMS) Home Page
  
• Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Home Page
  
• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Home page
  
• Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Home Page
  
• The Geometry Center
  
• Math Archives
  
• Mathematics WWW Virtual Library
  
• Penn State's Mathematics Information Servers
  
• Young Mathematicians Network (YMN) Home Page
  
• The Mathematics On-Line Bookshelf (TM)
  
• The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
• The Mathematical and Educational Quotation Server at WSC
  

Links of Interest for Undergraduates

• Mega-Mathematics is a site maintained by Los Alamos Laboratories which is dedicated to bring unusual and important mathematical ideas into elementary school classrooms.
  
• The Math Forum is an online community of teachers, students, researchers, parents, educators, and citizens at all levels who have an interest in math and math education.
  
• The MAA has a Student Section with information on mathematical careers, Research Experiences for Undergraduates, Pi MU Epsilon, Student Chapters, and student sections of MAA section meetings.
  
• SIAM has an Undergraduate Page with profiles of mathematicians, information on professional opportunities, undergraduate papers and essay's, student mailing lists, and internships.
  
• San Diego State University has the McNair Scholars Program. A summer research program for low-income students who are interested in becoming university professors.
  
• St Olaf has information on the Budapest Semester in Mathematics.This is a program through which junior/senior mathematics and computer science majors "may spend one or two semesters in Budapest studying under eminant Hungarian scholar-teachers." (This program is in English.)
  
  

The first figure is the Cayley graph of the (2,3,7)-triangle group and the second is a tesselation of the hyperbolic plane by triangles with angles of , and .
Reprinted by permission of AK Peters Publishers

Send comments to photchkiss AT wsc.ma.edu.
Last update: 8/19/2008