SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor ( on Leave AY23 - 24 )
Job Titles:
- Professor, Associate Dean
Dr. Lesley writes: I want to comment on the life of Chuck Bell, a remarkable man who has recently died. Chuck was from New Orleans and graduated from Xavier University, the only historically black Catholic University in the United States. He went on to earn his Ph.D. (1953) in Statistics from the University of Notre Dame. Chuck worked for Douglas Aircraft Co. for 4 years before and after finishing his Ph,D., and spent time at Xavier and at Stanford before joining our faculty at SDSU in 1958. Chuck was the second black faculty member at SDSU, and the first to be tenured. In 1964 he began a 2 year sabbatical that took him to several European centers, and on his return he took a position at Case Western, from which he went on to Professorships at Michigan, Washington and Tulane. He taught at the Univ. of Madrid in 1964 and in Sept. 1965 he went to the Institut de Statistiques (ISUP) in Paris. Kjell Doksum was there that year. He also visited statisticians in Tokyo and ISI in Calcutta. He spent time collaborating with Statisticians in Kenya, Nigeria and India. It is pretty clear that Chuck and his wife , Mary, were travelers. They also made a point of learning the language spoken wherever they were. It was hard to name a place that Chuck had not been to. I recall a conversation about Timbuktu. Chuck returned to SDSU in 1981, and stayed until 1992, when he retired.
Job Titles:
- Mathematics & Science Education
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Mathematics & Science Education
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Mathematics of Data Science
Job Titles:
- Professor, Statistics Programs Advisor
Job Titles:
- Associate Chair, Mathematics Education
- Professor, Associate Chair / Research
Job Titles:
- Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Dr. Edgar Howard, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University, died September 20, 2001. Dr. Howard was born March 4, 1932 and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. At the age of 19 he joined the Marine Corps and served as a radio operator during the Korean War. (His elbow makes a short but significant appearance in the movie "Battle Cry.") After his service, he returned to San Diego, where he had gone through basic training, and earned a Bachelor's degree in Physics (1959) and a Master's degree in Mathematics (1961) at San Diego State University. He then went into the Ph.D. program in Mathematics at New Mexico State University. On earning his Doctorate in 1964, Edgar spent two years at Idaho State University and in 1966 he became Assistant Professor of Mathematics at San Diego State University. He rose to the rank of Professor, and he retired in 1997. Edgar was a very fine teacher of Mathematics. He was named Most Influential Faculty Member by the outstanding graduating Math major 3 times. Additionally, he directed numerous Master's theses.
Like Gene Lopez, who died in late 2000, Edgar was a fine teacher who was honored several times with awards for outstanding teaching. In their honor, the Department has established the Gene Lopez and Edgar Howard Memorial Fund. All contributions will be used to promote and enhance the "mathematical culture" of our undergraduate programs.
Dr. Gene Lopez was born in 1926 and grew up in La Verne, California during the Great Depression. After serving in the army during World War II, he earned a scholarship to attend The University of California at Los Angeles. After earning his B.S. in Mathematics in 1951, Gene went on to obtain his Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA in 1961, under the supervision of Magnus Hestenes.
Gene came to the Mathematics Department at San Diego State University in 1961. He was a gentle man whose quiet demeanor seemed to captivate students during his lectures. His classes were often on a list of most popular in the University, a distinction which is unusual for Mathematics courses. He won the TRW Excellence in Teaching Award in 1999. Gene retired from teaching in the Spring of 2000. The Department has established the Gene Lopez and Edgar Howard Memorial Fund. All contributions will be used to promote and enhance the "mathematical culture" of our undergraduate programs.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Dr. Herbert A. Gindler, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University, suffered an apparent stroke on the evening of Tuesday, June 7, 2005 and died the next morning. Herb obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota in 1950. He came to the Mathematics Department at SDSU in 1960, and earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1961, under the direction of Angus Taylor at UCLA. Herb's area of specialization was Functional Analysis and Operator Theory. He also published papers on the teaching of calculus. For personal reasons, Herb became interested in Diabetes, and he organized a continuing seminar in mathematical modeling of Diabetes in 1983. Many of our faculty participated in that seminar, which ran for several years.
Video-based online mathematics learning, algebraic reasoning, students' mathematical noticing, and transfer of learning
Job Titles:
- Associate Chair, Statistics
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Director of the Mathematics and Statistics Learning Center
Job Titles:
- Department Chair
- Professor, Department Chair
Dr. R. Deanne Branstetter was on our faculty from 1955 to 1981. Dr. Branstetter was born on June 29, 1918 and died March 12, 2007. He grew up on an 80 acre farm in Curryville, Missouri. Dean graduated from NE Missouri State Teachers College in 1940 with a BS in Mathematics. It was there that he met Geraldine Gehrke whom he married and celebrated 62 years of marriage before her death in 2005.
During WWII, Deanne served as a navigator in the Army Air Corps. After the war, he continued his graduate studies, completing his Masters at Vanderbilt University and his PhD in Mathematics at Iowa State University. His career then took him to Colorado Springs where he worked for the Air Defense Command as an Operations Analyst. After two years, he made a career change and moved his family to San Diego, where he taught mathematics at San Diego State College for 26 years. In 1967 he was honored with the Distinguished Teaching Award by the State of California.
The students at San Diego State also awarded him with an Outstanding Teacher Award. Professor Branstetter served as a member of the Statewide Academic Senate and served as Chairman of the San Diego State College Senate. Besides teaching, he served for a time as the Mathematics Department Chairman (1964-67) and as Dean of Undergraduate Studies for the College. He retired from teaching at San Diego State in 1981. Retirement led to touring much of the world and teaching as a guest professor at many universities. He taught Probability and Statistics for 10 years at Brigham Young University and also had assignments for teaching a semester in Hawaii and at Kansas State University. At BYU he was active as a volunteer in helping students prepare for their actuarial exams. BYU granted him the rank of Professor Emeritus and recognized him for outstanding service to the university. Burial is in Derby, Kansas.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Mathematical Sciences
Dr. Saul Drobnies, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Sciences at San Diego State University, died October 22, 2002, at San Diego Hospice, of lung cancer. He was born on June 8, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, and moved with his parents, Abraham and Lee Drobnies, to Dallas, Texas, when he was five years old. He graduated from Forest Avenue High School in Dallas in January, 1950, and briefly attended Southern Methodist University before moving to Austin to attend the University of Texas, where he received all of his academic degrees. He studied with the renowned mathematician and teacher, R. L. Moore, and completed his doctoral studies in 1961 under the guidance of Hubert S. Wall. Dr. Drobnies worked for General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas, and taught mathematics at San Diego State University from 1963 until his retirement in the early nineties.
Job Titles:
- Associate Chair, Mathematics
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Administrative Support Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Member of the Adjunct Statistics & Data Science Faculty Team
- Senior Data Consultant, Kaiser Permanente
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor ( Imperial Valley Campus )
Job Titles:
- Member of the Adjunct Statistics & Data Science Faculty Team
- Managing Partner, SpecterMetrix / Chairman, Analytics Committee Interest Group, Software San Diego
Job Titles:
- Professor, Statistics Associate Chair
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus / Chief of Biostatistics ( Retired )
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor ( Imperial Valley Campus )
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of CRMSE
Shape-restricted regression, change-point estimation, machine learning, survey statistics, biostatistics, and actuarial science