Joel Vincent Brawley, Jr. is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Clemson University. Brawley is reputed nationally for being a prolific mathematics educator and is regarded highly for his teaching abilities. Brawley is also a prominent researcher in the field of algebra, specifically finite fields.
Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change.
Clemson University is an American public, coeducational, land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university in student population in South Carolina. For the fall 2017 semester, the university enrolled a total of 19,402 undergraduate students and 4,985 graduate students, and the student/faculty ratio was 18:1. Clemson's 1,400 acre campus is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and sits next to Lake Hartwell. The university manages the nearby 17,500 acre Clemson Experimental Forest that is used for research, education, and recreation.
Research comprises "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications." It is used to establish or confirm facts, reaffirm the results of previous work, solve new or existing problems, support theorems, or develop new theories. A research project may also be an expansion on past work in the field. Research projects can be used to develop further knowledge on a topic, or in the example of a school research project, they can be used to further a student's research prowess to prepare them for future jobs or reports. To test the validity of instruments, procedures, or experiments, research may replicate elements of prior projects or the project as a whole. The primary purposes of basic research are documentation, discovery, interpretation, or the research and development (R&D) of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge. Approaches to research depend on epistemologies, which vary considerably both within and between humanities and sciences. There are several forms of research: scientific, humanities, artistic, economic, social, business, marketing, practitioner research, life, technological, etc.
Joel Vincent Brawley, Jr. was born in Mooresville in 1938. He went to the Mooresville High School and received his undergraduate degree in Engineering Mathematics/Mechanics, master's and doctoral degrees in Mathematics and Statistics, all from the North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dr. Brawley came to Clemson University as an assistant professor in 1965 after a brief stint on the Faculty of NCSU. He became associate professor in 1968, professor in 1972 and the Alumni Distinguished Professor in 1982.
An undergraduate degree is a colloquial term for an academic degree taken by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. It is also an oxymoron, since one cannot hold a degree as an undergraduate. In the United States, it is usually offered at an institution of higher education, such as a college or university. The most common type of these undergraduate degrees are associate's degree and bachelor's degree. Bachelor's degree typically takes at least three or four years to complete. These degrees can be categorised as basic degrees.
Statistics is a branch of mathematics dealing with data collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation. In applying statistics to, for example, a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model process to be studied. Populations can be diverse topics such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments. See glossary of probability and statistics.
North Carolina State University is a public research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina system and is a land-, sea-, and space-grant institution. The university forms one of the corners of the Research Triangle together with Duke University in Durham and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Brawley has also been a research consultant with the National Security Agency (NSA) for the past three decades.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence. The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine.
Dr. Joel Brawley received the highest awards in the nation for mathematics education including the Deborah and Franklin Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics from the Mathematical Association of America, South Carolina Governor's Professor of the Year and the Class of 39 Award for Excellence from the Clemson University.
The Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics are awards given by the Mathematical Association of America to recognize college or university teachers "who have been widely recognized as extraordinarily successful and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions." The Haimo awards are the highest teaching honor bestowed by the MAA. The awards were established in 1993 by Deborah Tepper Haimo and named after Haimo and her husband Franklin Haimo. After the first year of the award up to three awards are given every year.
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists; statisticians; and many others in academia, government, business, and industry.
South Carolina is a state in the Southeastern United States and the easternmost of the Deep South. It is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the southwest by Georgia across the Savannah River.
