The Shodor Computational Science Institute

B. Project Description

B5. Biographical Sketches

B5.2 Dr. Holly P. Hirst

Holly Hirst is an award winning teacher and assistant professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University, with a Ph.D. in mathematics from The Pennsylvania State University (1989). She is department coordinator for courses in modeling, numerical methods and operations research. She also coordinates Appalachian's Annenberg/CPB INPUT award winning quantitative literacy course and the associated computer lab, and is co-author of the course materials, including the text How Do You Know? Using Math to Make Decisions. She has given over 20 presentations and taught 4 workshops centered around incorporating modeling into mathematics courses at all levels over the last five years.

Dr. Hirst has been active in several activities involving incorporation of computing into curricula at various educational levels.

She was a recipient of the Undergraduate Computational Science Award, given by the Department of Energy to authors of innovative course materials for computational science (1994);

She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Shodor Education Foundation, an organization devoted to advancement of computational science and mathematics in K-12 and undergraduate education (1994 -);

She was a member of the Computational Science and Engineering Steering Committee for the Department of Energy, a committee focused on disseminating computational science materials over the world wide web (1994-96);

She is a member of the Class of 96 Project Kaleidoscope Faculty for the 21st Century (PKAL F21); PKAL is an informal national alliance of individuals, institutions, and organizations committed to strengthening the nation's undergraduate science and mathematics community. The PKAL F21 network is sponsored by the Exxon Educational Foundation.

She was an instructor in the Workshop on Numerical Modeling and Interactive Learning Environments, a workshop funded by the Mellon Foundation designed to provide faculty from the Associated Colleges of the South with the knowledge and experience to incorporate modeling and computation into their math and science curricula (at Furman University, 1997).

She was an instructor in SuperQuest for Teachers, a workshop designed to provide high school teachers with the knowledge and experience to incorporate scientific modeling into their curricula (at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 1994).

She was an instructor in the Carolinas Summer Institute in Computational Science, a UFE workshop designed to provide undergraduate math and science faculty with the knowledge and experience to incorporate computational science and mathematics into their curricula (at the North Carolina Supercomputing Center, 1993).

Dr. Hirst's publications include:

A Laboratory Course in Mathematics for Liberal Arts Majors, to appear in the INPUT Project Proceedings 1997 (Co-Author: J. Smith)

Writing In College Algebra Using Linear Programming Projects, The Proceedings of the 1996 ICTCM (Co-Author: J. Smith)

How Do You Know? Using Mathematics to Make Decisions, Textbook and Teacher's Guide, Kendall-Hunt, Inc. 1996 (Co-Editor: J. Smith)

Investigating Eigensystems in Introductory Linear Algebra, The Maple Technical Newsletter 2(2) 1995 (Co-Author: W. Bauldry)

Bounding the Roots of Polynomials, to appear in The College Mathematics Journal, September
1997 (Co-Author: W. Macey)

Teaching Modeling using Population Models, a web resource to appear on the UCES site
at Ames Lab

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