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!  But I'm still committed to my goals from last year: work through strategic planning to bring academic priorities (priorities involving your quality of life in the classroom, while doing other academic work with your professors, and other things directly related to your education) to the forefront of campus spending.  Sound boring?  Sound frustrating?  I haven't given up yet, though am about ready to.  I yearn for the day when I can spend the whole day thinking about math!

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.  

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.