• Undergraduate Institution: Appalachian State University
• Position: Academic Computing Services
• Company: Appalachian State University
• Industry Sector: Information Technology
• Date Submitted: 3/06

What he does:

• Brent works in technical support at Appalachian, and plans to remain there.

Math on the job:

• Brent says that, "I believe my mathematics background has helped a great deal, though indirectly. While not being a mathematics field, technical support has offered me numerous opportunities to exercise problem solving techniques. I also spend a portion of my time automating tasks by writing anything from simple scripts to large programs, and mathematics plays a key role in doing so in an effective manner."

Education:

• He has an associate in arts and in science from Surry Community College, a bachelor's in applied mathematics and computer science and a minor in statistics from Appalachian, and a master's in mathematics from appalachian. While completing his undergraduate coursework, he began gravitating towards mathematics and viewing computer science as a subset of applied math. For that reason, as well as a CSEMS scholarship offer from the National Science Foundation through Dr. Marland, he chose to complete his undergraduate Applied Math degree and start working towards a masters in math. Two years later he dual enrolled to complete the computer science undergraduate degree.
• He plans to begin a master's program in computer science in Fall of 2006 while working, which will take him approximately five years to complete.
• He says that the highlight of his experiences include, "
  "1) Dr. Marland and XPP. While it took a long time and is still carrying on, I learned a enormous amount about what I want to do with the skills ASU has provided me.
  2) The undergraduate course in cryptography. There were several class periods Dr. Bauldry and I simply sat and discussed the subject.
  3) Dr. Ginn's graduate Linear Algebra course.
  4) Dr. Anderson's graduate Partial Differential Equations course.
  5) My four statistics courses (a minor) from the University of Dr. Arnholt.
  6) Finally, *finally* understanding Analysis, thanks to Dr. Jeff Hirst.
  And, because I feel the need to end on a prime:
  7) Learning about the historical development of math through the ages with Dr. Sarah and Dr. Rhoads."

Advice for students:

• Brent advises to "Try to understand the perspective each subject has on the world. Even subsets of those subjects will have slightly different takes on how ideas should be organized and presented. Once you develop a framework in which the various subjects make sense it will be easier to learn objectively and become actively involved in shaping your own education. As I mentioned, I began to see computer science as a subset of applied math, and because that made sense to me it drastically changed the course of my studies. Another interesting perspective I was presented with deals with whether statistics is a subset of mathematics, or the other way around (Thank you, Dr. Arnholt)."