Mathematician Named Provost at Austin Peay State University

December 2, 2008

Mathematician Tristan Denley of the University of Mississippi has been named provost and vice president of academic and student affairs at Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tenn.

"I am thrilled to have been selected to serve as provost," Denley said. His term as provost begins in January 2009.

Denley had joined the mathematics department at Ole Miss in 1997. He was course coordinator of the freshman seminar program for the honors college; held the position of Senior Fellow of the University of Mississippi's new residential college; served as a member of the advisory board of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education; chaired the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning College Readiness in Math Task Force; and was a member of various committees and task forces. Serving as chair of the math department, which is one of the largest departments on campus, Denley was responsible for a $1.5 million budget and for directing 15 tenure-track faculty. He led the department through a redesign of its college algebra and elementary statistics curriculum and a transformation of its graduate program, increasing the number of doctoral graduates.

In 2006, Denley wrote the article "University of Mississippi Graduates Record Number of African-American PhDs" for the August/September issue of FOCUS.

Denley received his bachelor's degree in pure and applied mathematics from the University of Exeter. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1993 from the University of Cambridge, where he also received a certificate of advanced studies in mathematics. He had postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Umea (Sweden) and at the University of Waterloo (Canada). His research specialties are graph theory and combinatorics.

Source: Austin Peay State University, Nov. 18, 2008; Associated Press, Nov. 19, 2008; Clarksville, TN Online, Nov. 21, 2008; Daily Mississippian, Nov. 20, 2008.