Jessica Hauschild Accepted to Nebraska Ph.D. Program

2015 May 18

Jessica Hauschild of Andover , KS, who graduated May 9, 2015, from KWU with a B.A. in Mathematics, Summa Cum Laude, has been accepted as a Ph.D. student in Statistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Hauschild was among seven Kansas Wesleyan students to attend the Alpha Chi National Convention in Chicago, IL, March 18-22. There she was named as one of 10 recipients from across the nation to receive Alpha Chi's $2,500 H.Y. Benedict Fellowship, which will help with graduate school expenses. At that gathering, she also presented her original mathematics research "On the Levi Graph of Point-Line Configuration," with proofs, winning the Joseph E. and Bessie Mae Pryor Prize in Mathematics award for best mathematics paper presented at the national convention. This past February at Kansas Wesleyan, Hauschild presented an overview of this paper at "The Best of KWU," winning first place.

The paper is based on results of mathematical research she conducted during an eight-week REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) last summer (2014). The REU program is funded by the National Science Foundation (NFS). Hauschild was one of four students out of 200 applicants accepted to this particular REU opportunity. In January, she and her summer research partner, Jazmin Ortiz from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA, met in San Antonio, TX, to present a poster display on their research at The Joint Mathematics Meetings of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).

During spring 2015 semester, Hauschild and fellow KWU students Darren Woodson, '16, (Benson, KS) and Will Liu, '16, (Beijing, People's Republic of China) participated in the Mathematical Competition in Modeling. The three successfully completed an intense online problem-solving project within the three-day time limit, and were among 7,600 teams from more than 15 countries. Hauschild also served as a tutor in the Student Success Center in Memorial Library.

During KWU Honors and Awards Convocation on May 8, 2015, Hauschild was presented with the Outstanding Math Graduate Award. For Commencement, she was fittingly asked to introduce the keynote speaker, alumnus David L. Fancher, Ph.D., '64, who double majored in Math and Physics and later joined the KWU faculty to teach those subjects.