Deirdre Longacher Smeltzer (born 1964) is an American mathematician, mathematics educator, textbook author, and academic administrator. A former professor, dean, and vice president at

Eastern Mennonite University Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) is a private Mennonite university in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The university also operates a satellite campus in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which primarily caters to working adults. EMU's bachelor-degree holde ...

, she is Senior Director for Programs at the Mathematical Association of America.

Education and career

Smeltzer was a mathematics major at Eastern Mennonite University, graduating in 1987 with a minor in Bible study. At Eastern Mennonite, mathematicians Millard Showalter and Del Snyder became faculty mentors, encouraging her to continue in advanced mathematics. She went on to graduate study in mathematics at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

, earning a master's degree and completing her Ph.D. in 1994, with the dissertation ''Topics in Difference Sets in 2-Groups'' on

difference set In combinatorics, a (v,k,\lambda) difference set is a subset D of size k of a group G of order v such that every nonidentity element of G can be expressed as a product d_1d_2^ of elements of D in exactly \lambda ways. A difference set D is said ...

s in

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ...

, supervised by Harold Ward. She became a faculty member at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic university in

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center ...

, before returning to Eastern Mennonite University as a faculty member in 1998. She chaired the mathematical sciences department from 2005 to 2012. As an undergraduate at Eastern Mennonite, she had participated in a cross-cultural visit to China, and as a faculty member, she led another such visit in 2013, and became director of cross-cultural programs for the university. In 2013, she was named the university's vice president and undergraduate dean. In that position, she led the university's creation of new programs in political science and global studies, among others. She stepped down from her administrative positions at Eastern Mennonite in 2019, and joined the Mathematical Association of America as Senior Director for Programs in 2020.

Textbooks

Smeltzer is the coauthor of two undergraduate textbooks in mathematics: ''Methods for Euclidean Geometry'' (with Owen Byer and Felix Lazebnik, Mathematical Association of America, 2010) and ''Journey into Discrete Mathematics'' (with Owen Byer and Kenneth Wantz, MAA Press, 2018).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smeltzer, Deirdre 1964 births Living people American mathematicians American women mathematicians Mathematics educators Eastern Mennonite University alumni University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) faculty Eastern Mennonite University faculty