Summer 2008

Diane Evans Dedicated to Continuous Learning

With a cozy couch, playing cards and dice, soft drink bottles and scattered papers everywhere, Diane Evans’ faculty office amid Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s Crapo Hall resembles a residence hall or fraternity house room on a campus full of budding engineers, scientists and mathematicians.

That’s exactly the welcoming atmosphere that the award-winning mathematics professor wants to convey to whoever enters the always open door.

Evans, a relative newcomer to the faculty (since 2001), has already become legendary for answering students’ e-mail questions at midnight, writing extra solutions to homework, constantly fine-tuning her classroom lectures or researching algorithms for computing the distributions of sums of discrete random variables—and making this understandable to a novice in her field.

It’s no wonder that Evans received the Dean’s 2007 Outstanding Teacher Award, continuing a legacy of excellent classroom instruction in the Department of Mathematics.

“I promised that if I could become a teacher, I would do whatever I could to help my students succeed,” the soft-spoken Evans stated during a campus interview. “I want the students to know that I’m dedicated to their education and that we’re both putting effort into the learning experience.”

Evans modeled her teaching style from respected professors, including Rose- Hulman colleagues Roger Lautzenheiser, Elton Graves and Ralph Grimaldi. Those mentors were prepared, innovative, engaging, motivating, patient and challenging. She stresses applying mathematical concepts to real-life situations, and has spent hundreds of hours developing lectures and tests that not only teach concepts, but are fun, interesting, and generate student feedback and interaction.

An example of Evans’ teaching technique can be found in a recent calculus exam, where she asked students to use differential equations and Newton’s Law of Cooling to determine who poisoned a calculus teacher who had been at home preparing a final exam when visited by students from her class.

“Diane cares about her students through her almost obsessive pursuit of perfection . . . If idle hands are the Devil’s workplace then demons need not look for employment with Diane,” states mathematics colleague Michael DeVasher in admiration. He has joined Evans in teaching an Introductory Statistics course, a core subject area required of nearly all students. “She possesses the rare combination of intelligence and worldliness that makes her capable of understanding many advanced topics without losing her ability to communicate her knowledge at the most basic of levels,” he says.

Evans received the 2006 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Computing Society’s Prize for research excellence in the interface between operations research and computer science. The prize honored a collection of papers written over the span of a decade about probability software.

In recent years, Evans has added teaching a Quality Methods course to her teaching portfolio, applying elements of statistics and probability to help engineering students examine—and hopefully improve—manufacturing processes. One course period might consist of a lecture; another could involve students working in teams on problems; and another will consist of students providing examples of material or information that reinforces course topics. And, Evans occasionally organizes plant trips so that students can witness production practices.

Next year, Evans will spend an educational sabbatical examining quality control issues at Diversified Systems Inc. in Indianapolis. This will allow her to bring more perspective to the classroom.

“This will be my first ‘real job’ and will provide me with first-hand experience in how mathematics is important in the engineering world,” Evans says. “I know that I will come back (to Rose-Hulman) with an incredible experience, having a better feel for the nuts and bolts of engineering applications.”

“I may have thought that I knew math, but I had no idea how math principles were related to the manufacturing process. This is an example of how I have molded my teaching to better fit into Rose-Hulman and what we’re trying to do: educate quality engineers and scientists for real-world experiences,” she continues. “I have worked harder here than I did to get any of my academic degrees. The first few years I probably slept as much as the students, maybe two or three hours a night, as I prepared for my classes. Now, I have a better appreciation of what our students are wanting from me, and I’ve learned to talk in the engineer’s language.”

Interestingly, there was a time when Evans’ drive for perfection almost drove her away from Rose-Hulman. Last winter, after reading a critical student evaluation, she consulted with Lautzenheiser about why her teaching methods weren’t connecting with every student in a classroom.

“I didn’t know if I was good enough to teach at a college with such high standards and quality students as Rose- Hulman,” she acknowledged.

Lautzenheiser, a fellow Dean’s Outstanding Teacher Award winner, assured his young colleague that she was making a difference in her students’ academic careers. She just didn’t know it.

“Diane has that instinctive ability of making everyone around her feel comfortable,” states Lautzenheiser, pointing out that Evans displayed her musical talents in a duet with Mechanical Engineering Professor Thomas Adams in the college’s annual Engineers In Concert. “She creates a classroom atmosphere for the entire class where students feel comfortable asking and answering questions or working in groups.”

Mathematics student Robert Lemke- Oliver adds that Evans “encourages student participation and makes sure that nobody is left behind. Her class was probably one of the most comfortable I’ve been in.”

Stephen Lewis (Applied Biology, ’07), who took Evans’ Quality Methods course this spring as an engineering management graduate student, remarked: “Dr. Evans comes to class every day genuinely excited about the material she is teaching.”

Evans’ biggest disappointment may have been a prospectus for a Math For Dummies-type book, written with Lautzenheiser, that examined aspects of teaching differential equations. The publisher wanted more pizzazz from the subject.

“You can only do so much with differential equations,” says Evans, chuckling at the memory. “We’re teachers, not standup comedians.”

Now, she’s striving to write a textbook about linear algebra that will help students understand a complex topic, adding “We think we can be funnier with linear algebra.”