UMD News Releases

UMD graduate student commencement ceremonies are set for Thursday, May 13 at 7 p.m. in the UMD Romano Gymnasium. Advanced degrees will be awarded to 170 students at the event. Total number of graduate degrees awarded from UMD this academic year is 260.

UMD professor and distinguished mathematician, lecturer and author, Joseph Gallian, will deliver the featured commencement address.

Joseph Gallian is a professor of mathematics & statistics at UMD. Dr. Gallian obtained a B.A. from Slippery Rock University in 1966, an M.A. from the University of Kansas in 1968 and a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1971. After serving as a visiting Assistant Professor at Notre Dame for one year, he joined the faculty at University of Minnesota Duluth. He is the 2009-10 recipient of the UMD Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award.

Among his many honors are: President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), University of Minnesota Morse Alumni Distinguished University Teaching Professor, the MAA's Haimo Award for distinguished teaching, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Minnesota Professor of the Year, the MAA Allendoerfer and Evans awards for exposition, an MAA Polya Lecturer.

Since 1977 over 150 research papers written under his supervision by undergraduates in his UMD Summer Research Program have been published in mainstream journals. Ninety-five of the 149 program participants who have received their Bachelor's degrees have gone to graduate school at MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton, or Stanford, and 106 have won graduate fellowships. Eighty-five of the participants now have the Ph.D. degree.

Professor Gallian has given more than 250 invited lectures at conferences and colleges and universities and is the author or editor of five books and more than 100 articles. Besides the usual math courses, he has taught a Humanities course called the "The Lives and Music of the Beatles" for more than 25 years and a liberal arts course on math and sports. In 2000 the Duluth Budgeteer cited him as one of the "100 Great Duluthians."