Williams College Professor Wins Prestigious Math Teaching Award

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Satyan Devadoss, professor of mathematics at Williams College, has been awarded the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching of Mathematics, presented annually by the Mathematical Association of America. He will receive the award at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle in January 2016.

The sixth Williams professor to be honored with the Haimo Award, Devadoss joins previous Williams awardees Frank Morgan (1993), Colin Adams (1998), Edward B. Burger (2001), Thomas Garrity (2004) and Susan Loepp (2012).

Devadoss was a 2007 recipient of the MAA Henry Alder National Teaching Award and a 2014 recipient of the MAA Northeastern Sectional Award for Distinguished Teaching. Devadoss becomes just the third mathematics professor nationally to win both the Haimo and the Alder.

“Devadoss has a visual style of teaching that often combines striking images and artwork with mathematics,” said Frank Morgan, chair of the Williams Mathematics and Statistics Department and Webster Atwell ’21 Professor of Mathematics. “His courses are also famously difficult, and despite that — or perhaps because of it — the students love him.”

The Haimo Award recognizes college or university faculty whose influence goes beyond their own institution and who are widely recognized as extraordinary teachers. Devadoss, whose work in geometry and visualization has been nationally recognized, is credited with helping grow mathematics at Williams. Currently, more than 12 percent of students at Williams choose to major in mathematics.  



Devadoss developed a course in computational geometry that led to the textbook he co-authored with Joe O'Rourke, Discrete and Computational Geometry (Princeton University Press); developed a 36-lecture DVD course for Great Courses called The Shape of Nature; and has given talks on research mathematics from a visual lens at Pixar Animation Studios, Google and Lucasfilm.

Devadoss’ research often brings art and mathematics together to illuminate both disciplines. He taught a 2015 Williams tutorial course on origami in which students worked with the Williams College Museum of Art to design and create popup books based on mathematical folding theorems.

“I always include drawings in my own research papers,” Devadoss said. “I believe art can help us understand deep mathematics, encountering cerebral ideas in physical terms.

“Williams has given me incredible freedom to teach and pursue research on topics that interest me, and so a huge amount of credit has to go to Williams as an institution and to my department for always supporting my endeavors,” Devadoss said.


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Williamstown Select Board Awards ARPA Funds to Remedy Hall

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday allocated $20,000 in COVID-19-era relief funds to help a non-profit born of the pandemic era that seeks to provide relief to residents in need.
 
On a unanimous vote, the board voted to grant the American Rescue Plan Act money to support Remedy Hall, a resource center that provides "basic life necessities" and emotional support to "individuals and families experiencing great hardship."
 
The board of the non-profit approached the Select Board with a request for $12,000 in ARPA Funds to help cover some of the relief agency's startup costs, including the purchase of a vehicle to pick up donations and deliver items to clients, storage rental space and insurance.
 
The board estimates that the cost of operating Remedy Hall in its second year — including some one-time expenses — at just north of $31,500. But as board members explained on Monday night, some sources of funding are not available to Remedy Hall now but will be in the future.
 
"With the [Williamstown] Community Chest, you have to be in existence four or five years before you can qualify for funding," Carolyn Greene told the Select Board. "The same goes for state agencies that would typically be the ones to fund social service agencies.
 
"ARPA made sense because [Remedy Hall] is very much post-COVID in terms of the needs of the town becoming more evident."
 
In a seven-page letter to the town requesting the funds, the Remedy Hall board wrote that, "need is ubiquitous and we are unveiling that truth daily."
 
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