National awards to math honor society members at WCCC 22-07-2012

Here are (from left) Mu Alpha Theta member Jeremy Hausman, founder and advisor Joseph Phillips and member Erich Nething.

WASHINGTON TWP. — Members of Warren County Community College’s mathematics honor society earned national recognition at the recent 2012 Mu Alpha Theta National Convention in Boston. Society member Erich Nething placed sixth in the Alpha Chalk Talk competition. Nething took on the best and brightest math students in the country with his derivation of the Poisson distribution from the binomial distribution as it relates to the actuarial sciences. The group also placed 13th and was awarded team trophies in the Alpha Gemini competition. “What Erich accomplished at the nationals is amazing!” remarked Phillips, the founder and adviser of the college’s chapter of Mu Alpha Theta. “Our team trained hard all year in the hopes of improving on last year’s award-winning performance in Dallas. The students’ hard work and dedication paid off and I couldn’t be more proud of their achievements!”

This was the WCCC’s math team’s third appearance at the national math competition. Last year, the team brought home trophies from the competition in Dallas. Prior to that, the team won awards at the 2010 national competition in Washington, D.C.

The honor society’s three year winning streak at the nationals is a testament to the team’s dedication, scholarship, and teamwork, noted Phillips. This year, he added, all of the honor society members worked tirelessly to raise enough money to attend the competition.

WCCC was one of only 43 schools from around the country to attend this prestigious event with teams traveling to participate from as far away as Hawaii.

Mu Alpha Theta is the national mathematics honor society for high schools and two-year colleges. It has over 75,000 student members in more than 1,500 schools worldwide. Its goals are to inspire keen interest in mathematics, develop strong scholarship in the subject, and promote the enjoyment of mathematics in high school and two-year college students.

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