The following is a message from President Nathan Hatch: 

While commencement season always brings about a sense of new beginnings and opportunities, it’s also a time to say thank you and bid farewell to many of our friends, colleagues and mentors who have called Wake Forest University home.

Please join me in congratulating and commemorating a marvelous class of Reynolda Campus faculty and staff retiring from Wake Forest this year. We are grateful for the many contributions from this remarkable group of individuals, who together have more than 800 years of service to the University: Continue reading »

Bob Plemmons (’61), Z. Smith Reynolds professor of mathematics and computer science, has been selected as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

The fellowship honors SIAM members who have made outstanding contributions to the fields served by the organization.

“Being selected as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics means a lot to me in terms of accomplishments as I retire from teaching at Wake Forest, although my research activities will continue for a few more years,” Plemmons said. “This Society has been my home professional organization throughout my academic career, spanning forty-seven years and four universities, with the last twenty-three spent at my alma mater, Wake Forest.”

The focus for SIAM is applied, computational and industrial mathematics, and the society often promotes its acronym as “Science and Industry Advance with Mathematics.” It was founded in 1950 in Philadelphia and currently has more than 15,000 members worldwide.

“My research is centered around applied research directly addressed by SIAM,” Plemmons said, “and I’ve been a very active member over the years in terms of administration and conference organizing.”

Wake Forest senior Sean Cusano (’13) and first-year Wake medical student Matthew Martin (BS ’12) examine a team’s bottle rocket.

On Saturday, 179 local middle and high school students competed in a regional Science Olympiad tournament, a track meet-like event that featured 46 different events in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Nine high school and eight middle school teams from Alleghany, Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Stokes, Surry, Wilkes and Yadkin counties participated.

Wake Forest biology professor Carole Browne served as the Science Olympiad regional director and coordinated more than 40 volunteers from Wake Forest and the Winston-Salem community.

In addition to students from the Reynolda and Bowman Gray campuses, the following faculty and staff also gave of their time to oversee events such as Bottle Rocket, Forensics, Shock Value, Designer Genes and Elastic Launched Glider: Continue reading »

Congratulations to William W. Fleeson, professor of psychology, whose proposal entitled “Integrating Process and Structure in Borderline Personality Disorder” has been funded by the National Institutes of Health under award number 5R01MH070571-07.

Congratulations to Stephen B. Robinson, professor of mathematics, whose proposal entitled “SEARCDE 2012 Conference” has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Congratulations to Robert James Plemmons, Reynolds professor of math, whose proposal entitled “Comprehensive Space-Object Characterization using Spectrally Compressive Polarimetric Imaging” has been funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the University of New Mexico (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to Richard T. Williams, Reynolds professor of physics, whose proposal entitled “Physics of Scintillator Nonproportionality” has been funded by the US Department of Energy and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to Timothy N. French, Magnolia Scholars program director, whose proposal entitled “Summer Bridge” has been funded by the NC Independent Colleges and Universities.

Congratulations to Freddie Salsbury, associate professor of physics, whose proposal entitled “Metal Occupancy of Zinc Finger Motifs as Determinants for Zn2+-Mediated Chemosensitization of Prostate Cancer Cells” has been funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and WFU Health Sciences (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to Errin W. Fulp, associate professor of computer science, whose propsoal entitled “An Evolutionary-Inspired Approach for Moving Target Defenses” has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Congratulations to Ellen Kirkman, professor of mathematics, whose proposal entitled “Invariant Theory of Artin-Schelter Regular Algebras” has been funded by the Simons Foundation.

Congratulations to Samuel Cho, assistant professor of physics and computer science, whose proposal entitled “Extrapolating the Concept of Protein Corona for Understanding Nanoparticles at Large” has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Clemson University (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to Richard Williams, Reynolds professor of physics, whose proposal entitled “Quantifying recombination dynamics in Srl2:Eu2+ with material variations: mechanisms and scintillator optimization” has been funded by the US Department of Energy and the Fisk University (WFU funding agency).

Congratulations to Sarah Raynor, associate professor of mathematics, whose proposal entitled “Asymptotic Behavior of Solutions to Nonlinear Dispersive Equations” has been funded by the Simons Foundation.

Congratulations to Gloria Muday, professor of biology, whose proposal entitled “Teaching genetics with tomatoes” has been funded by the American Society of Plant Biologists.

Professor of Mathematics Ellen Kirkman has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) for 2013. This is the program’s first year, and the inaugural class of 1,119 represents more than 600 institutions.

“This is the first group of AMS fellows who have been elected,” Kirkman said.  “It is a distinguished group of mathematicians, and I am honored to be chosen. It’s nice to be recognized by one’s peers.”

The Fellows of the AMS designation recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics. The goals of the program are to create an enlarged class of mathematicians recognized by their peers as distinguished for their contributions to the profession and to honor excellence.

The AMS is the world’s largest and most influential society dedicated to mathematical research, scholarship, and education.

The initial class of Fellows of the AMS in its entirety can be found here.

Kirkman joined the Wake Forest faculty in 1975.

See a list of employees joining and leaving the University in August 2012: Continue reading »

See a list of employment milestones reached by faculty in September 2012:

30 years
Maya Angelou; Reynolds Prof/American Studies

William Selden Hamilton; Professor, German & Russian

35 years
Andrew V. Ettin; Professor, English

Allan Louden; Chair/Assoc Professor, Communication

Teresa Radomski; Professor, Music

Cecilia H. Solano; Assoc Chair/Assoc Professor, Psychology

40 years
James J. Kuzmanovich; Professor, Mathematics

45 years
Ronald E. Noftle; Professor, Chemistry