Owen Byer

Owen joined the Eastern Mennonite faculty in 1999 after teaching at Northwestern College (Iowa) for three years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with secondary certification at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Delaware in Newark. His primary mathematical interests are combinatorics and extremal graph theory, although he has finished coauthoring a geometry textbook, Methods for Euclidean Geometry, and is awaiting the publication from MAA. His hobbies include playing basketball, bridge, and watching NFL football. Owen and his wife Barbara married in January 1990, with son Cameron born in 1998 and daughter Lily in 2001. The family attends Weavers Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va.

• B.A. in Mathematics, with secondary education certification, from Messiah College, 1989.
• M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Delaware, 1996. Thesis: Several Results on Extremal (v,e)-graphs.

• Methods for Euclidean Geometry, a 450-page book, to be published by Mathematical Association of America in 2010 (joint with Deirdre L. Smeltzer and Felix Lazebnik).
• Exploring Loci in Geometry, Proceedings of the Sixteenth Conference of the ACMS (2007), pp 114-140. (joint with Deirdre L. Smeltzer)
• Edge bounds in nonhamiltonian k-connected graphs, Discrete Mathematics 307 (2007), pp.1572-1579. (joint with Deirdre L. Smeltzer)
• Mathematics Competency, a booklet used in EMU’s Foundations of Mathematics course, May 2007. (joint with Deirdre L. Smeltzer)
• Observations on the Indeterminacy of the Sample Correlation Coefficient, College Mathematics Journal, Volume 33 (September 2002), pp. 320-322.
• Mental Arithmetic, Finding Squares, Mathematics Teacher, Volume 6 (September 2002), page 406.
• Maximum Number of 3-paths in a Graph, ARS Combinatoria, Volume 61 (2001), pp. 73-79.
• Two Path Extremal Graphs and an Application to a Ramsey-type Problem, Discrete Mathematics, Volume 196 (1999), pp. 51-64.
• Some New Bounds on the Maximum Number of Vertex Colorings of a (v,e)-Graph, Journal of Graph Theory, Volume 28 (1998), pp. 115-128.
• Maximum Number of 4-cliques in a 4-partite Graph, Bulletin of ICA, Volume 21 (1997), pp. 27-32.

• NFL Passer Ratings: Are they really rocket science? Invited speaker at Mathematics Colloquium, Longwood University, March 16, 2010.

• Reviewer for Mathematical Reviews.
• Director of Harrisonburg Duplicate Bridge Club.
• Chair of Finance Committee, Weavers Mennonite Church.
• Writer of mathematics for GRE Questions for ETS (I receive a stipend for this work.).

• Mathematical Association of America
• Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences

• MAA Sectional meeting, Virginia State College, April 16-17, 2010.

• Member of Committee on Teacher Education
• Member of Faculty Status Committee
• Member of Search Committee for Computer Science Professor position