Utah Tech professor earns national recognition in math education

Dr. Vinodh Kumar Chellamuthu, associate professor of mathematics at Utah Tech University, was recently honored with the Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching, becoming the first in the state of Utah to receive this award from the Mathematical Association of America.

Each year, the association honors three college or university professors whose teaching has been extraordinarily successful in undergraduate mathematics and whose influence extends beyond their own classrooms.

“I am deeply honored and humbled to receive the prestigious national Alder Award for distinguished teaching,” Chellamuthu said. “I am even more honored to join past Alder Award recipients whose work has profoundly inspired me in my journey as an educator.”

While receiving the award at the association’s annual MathFest conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Chellamuthu also presented to conference attendees about active and authentic learning.

“As an educator committed to helping and improving the student lives and community, I always stress that the primary purpose of life and learning is to serve people and contribute to society to make it better,” Chellamuthu said.

Chellamuthu began teaching at Utah Tech in 2015 and encourages his students to apply their mathematical knowledge to real-world settings. Under his direction, a group of students worked with the City of St. George Police Department to redistribute their workload by gathering data and using it in a mathematical formula.

“Through these experiences, students have built their creativity, enhanced their lateral thinking and discovered their potential is unlimited,” Chellamuthu said. “Moreover, exposing our students to these real-world problems and mentoring them to solve them in real-world settings exemplifies Utah Tech's active and applied learning mission.”

Utah Tech University’s Math Department features small class sizes and offers students opportunities to work closely with their professors and peers on real-world research projects in cutting-edge fields. The department prepares students for careers in fields such as analytics or education and offers bachelor’s degrees in math, math education and applied and computational mathematics as well as minors and certificates. For more information, visit math.utahtech.edu.