New Hobby!

We started by taking lessons with a really great outfit called Innocent Surf School.  Ru and Gem and John - - thanks for the good times and excellent instruction!

Day 1 with Ru:

And finally we take to the water for the first time:

All was going well until [insert Jaws music]...the stingray!

But never fear, I got back up, took two more lessons, and practiced a bit.  I learned to get up somewhat regularly, accelerate and brake, and turn a few times.  But the photographer was gone.  So much for glory.

 

Old hobby: still an obsession.

 

Elaine McDonald-Newman

 

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Sonoma State University

 

Send me an email at elaine.newman@sonoma.edu

 

Office phone (but don't leave a message there):

707 664-4461

 

 

 

 Beginning to lead the roof on West Crack, Tuolumne Meadows

August, 2005

 

 

Fall 2008

On sabbatical

 

 

If you need to know the latest hours that the computer labs are open, click here.

If you want to purchase the student version of Mathematica for your home machine, or buy one of their time-limited student licenses, go to http://www.wolfram.com/products/students.html.

You may find that you need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader to read some of my linked files containing math symbols.  Click on the link to go to the Acrobat website where you can download it for free.

 

Just clipped the first bolt, Stupendous Man, 5.10a, Pinnacles, Spring 2008

SSU Campus policies you should be aware of:

Campus diversity statement http://www.sonoma.edu/diversity/index.html

Grade appeal policy http://www.sonoma.edu/uaffairs/policies/gradepolicy.htm

Cheating and plagiarism policy http://www.sonoma.edu/uaffairs/policies/cheatingpolicy.htm

Accommodations for students with disabilities

 http://www.sonoma.edu/sas/dss/dssmission.shtml

Solving the roof on Rat Race, 5.7

Pinnacles, Spring 2008

 

A little background about me:

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1983 and instantly fell in love with it.  I received my BA in pure mathematics at Cal in 1992 and then left for UCLA for graduate school.  LA was a bit of a shock...but it really was a fun place to live (for a while anyway).  I received my Ph.D. in pure mathematics in 1998, specializing in probability.  From there it was finally back up to the North Bay and Sonoma State. 

I am no longer Chair of the SSU Academic Senate.  Yahoo!  And now I'm on sabbatical.  In the last few years, I yearned for the day when I could spend the whole day thinking about math!  And now I CAN.  Wow.  I'm interested in ways we can successfully bring technology into classes appropriately (say in stats and calculus), and ways to make mathematical programming more collaborative (with pair programming). 

Usually, I don't get a whole lot of time to do research, but worked for a few years with Holly Gardner, a former graduate student in the Biology Department.   She's really interested in math, believe it or not all you biology students in my elementary statistics classes out there.  She'll even advise you to TAKE MORE MATH CLASSES!  In any case, she was interested in the bacterial composition of vernal pools in the local hills, and I am interested in the probability (or stochastic) models (hidden Markov models) that help us do DNA sequence alignment as well as other equally fascinating tasks.  Here's where you can download the talk we gave at the SSU Biology Colloquium in April, 2004 

I was a 1999/2000 Project NExT fellow  (NExT stands for 'New Experiences in Teaching').  Project NExT is a fabulous program for junior mathematics faculty across the nation who are interested in important issues in the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics.  NExT is a program of the Mathematical Association of America .  For more information, or if you'd like to apply to Project NExT, see the Project's home page .

I also was an instructor for the  Summer Program for Women in Mathematics at The George Washington University.  I taught a class in queueing theory (another great stochastic (there's that word again) model).  The program's participants are women math majors from around the country who have just completed their junior year in college.  If you are eligible, I strongly encourage you to apply!  What an incredible program--I met the most fascinating people, went on great field trips, sat through interesting lectures, and generally enjoyed myself in DC and Virginia.  Check out the link above to apply for next summer.

...I also climb-above I'm leading Wet Kiss, 5.9,  at the Pinnacles National Monument, 2007.