Keith Mellinger, associate professor and chair of mathematics, and a colleague from Virginia Tech, were presented the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award at the annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America in Pittsburgh in August. The award recognizes outstanding expository articles in mathematics. Mellinger was honored for the article, “Kirkman’s  Schoolgirls Wearing Hats and Walking Through Fields of Numbers,” that appeared in the February 2009 edition of Mathematics Magazine. Read about the award and see the article at http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/22/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=1355.

In addition, Mellinger published two papers, “Classes of Permutation Arrays in Finite Projective Spaces” in the International Journal of Information and Coding Theory, and “On the Number of k-gons in Finite Projective Planes” in Note di Matematica. In addition, Dr. Mellinger gave several talks, “On Blocking Semiovals Containing Conics” at the Discrete Mathematics Seminar at the University of Delaware; “Kirkman’s Schoolgirls Wearing Hats and Walking through Fields of Numbers” at a departmental colloquium at California State University, Fresno; “Coding, Cryptography and Conics: Using What They Know to Introduce Research” at a faculty seminar at CSU Fresno; and “Applying the Stuff We Like: Blocking Semiovals and Cryptology” at a discrete mathematics seminar at Virginia Commonwealth University.