Mark Conger

Education

Ph.D. in Mathematics, 2007. Thesis adviser: Divakar Viswanath.
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
M.A. in Mathematics, 1993
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
B.A. in Mathematics, 1989. Cum Laude and with honors.
Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts)

Employment History

Academic Program Officer Associate and Lecturer II in Mathematics
University of Michigan, Department of Mathematics and Comprehensive Studies Program (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
September 2007-Present

Projects and Responsibilities:

Primary Responsibility for teaching and developing the Douglass Houghton Scholars Program, an enrichment program for calculus students in the model of the Emerging Scholars Program developed by Uri Treisman at Berkeley and the University of Texas. Taught two class sections in both the fall and winter semesters each year, 2007 to present. Have mentored and supported a number of students after completion of the program.
Summers 2012 through 2014, developed and taught a new course, Math 104, for Summer Bridge students. Math 104 is designed for incoming freshmen who are planning to be liberal arts majors. Its goal is to present some of the great ideas of mathematics in a form that allows non-technical students to appreciate them.
Taught: Math 214 (Linear Algebra), Math 389 (Introduction to Math Research) (four times), Math 116 (Calculus II).
Assisted with new instructor training for three years.
Extensive web development in support of DHSP has included databases and interfaces for campus events, summer prospects, banquets and dinners, a registry of alumni, exam review sheets, alumni panels, content management, and "shops" that allow students to construct practice exams from old problems.
Other programming projects include a message board for Math 389, a group selector system for DHSP, and demo programs for linear transformations, Fourier series, Newton's method, dynamical systems, hanging chains, the logistic equation, and other topics.

Instructor
Michigan Math and Science Scholars (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
2005-present

Taught and developed two summer courses for advanced high school students: "The Nature of Infinity" and "Math and the Internet". Both courses are designed to present material that strong high shool students have not seen before in an engaging way that makes them want to pursue more mathematics.

Graduate Student Instructor
University of Michigan Department of Mathematics (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
2004-2005

Developed and coordinated Math 110 (precalculus) for approximately 75 students in each of two terms.

Graduate Student Instructor
Michigan Math and Science Scholars (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
2002-2004

Taught "The Nature of Infinity".

Programmer
Scrap Price Bulletin (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
2000

Wrote the online version of the bulletin in Javascript.

Senior Software Engineer
SupplyTech, Inc. (later Harbinger Corporation) (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
1994-1997

Worked on a variety of projects including database and user interface portions of an Electronic Data Interchange product. Most programming was in C++.

Graduate Student Instructor
University of Michigan Department of Mathematics (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
1991-1993

Taught Math 115 (Calculus I) and Math 105 (Precalculus) twice apiece.

Programmer/Analyst
Cognetics Corporation (Princeton Junction, New Jersey)
1990

Worked on a variety of projects in several languages, especially C, assembler, and AWK. My first full-time job.

Programmer
Williams College Department of Biology (Williamstown, Massachusetts)
1989

Significantly modified and improved a set of programs used for analysis of flora populations and wrote a compatible data-entry program.

Student Researcher
Williams College SMALL Mathematical Research Group (Williamstown, Massachusetts)
1988

Helped prove a theorem and write the resulting paper about minimizing networks, and wrote software to aid in knot theory research.

Programming Languages

Much programming: C++, Perl, Postscript, 8086 Assembler, BASIC.

Significant programming: Python, HTML, CSS, XSLT, Maple, Matlab, Scheme, Awk, Fortran, Java, Javascript, SQL, UNIX shell scripts, Windows batch files, 6809 Assembler.

Publications

Mark Conger, Jason Howald. "A better way to deal the cards". American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 117, No. 8. October 2010.
Mark Conger. "A Refinement of the Eulerian Numbers, and the Joint Distribution of π(1) and des(π) in S_n". Ars Combinatoria, Volume XCV. April 2010.
Mark Conger. Shuffling Decks With Repeated Card Values. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan. 2007.
Mark Conger, Divakar Viswanath. "Shuffling Cards for Blackjack, Bridge, and Other Card Games". Submitted.
Mark Conger, Divakar Viswanath. "Normal Approximations for Descents and Inversions of Permutations of Sets and Multisets". Journal of Theoretical Probability, 20(2). 2007. 309-325.
Mark Conger, Divakar Viswanath. "Riffle shuffles of decks with repeated cards". Annals of Probability, 34(2). 2006. 804-819.
Manuel Alfaro, Mark Conger, Kenneth Hodges, et. al. "The structure of singularities in Φ-minimizing networks in R²". Pacific Journal of Mathematics 149(2). 1991. 201-210.
Mark Conger. Energy-minimizing networks in Rⁿ. Senior honors thesis, Williams College. 1989.

Academic Awards and Honors

Lester R. Ford Award for expository excellence, Mathematical Association of America, 2011
Departmental fellowship, University of Michigan Department of Mathematics, 2006
Summer fellowship, University of Michigan Department of Mathematics, 2003
Elected to Sigma Pi Sigma (physics honor society), University of Michigan Department of Physics, 2001
Graduate fellowship, University of Michigan Rackham School of Graduate Studies, 1990-1991
Elected to Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, 1989