Michael Carlyle
  • mathematics and German
  • Class of 2013
  • Belvidere, IL

Michael Carlyle participated in Celebration of Learning

2012 May 7

More than 75 Augustana students from all academic areas shared their advanced research projects on Saturday, May 5, at the Celebration of Learning. This on-campus research symposium annually gives students an opportunity to show off their academic accomplishments to their families and the Augustana community.

Among the students involved:

Michael Carlyle, a junior from Belvidere, Ill., majoring in German and mathematics. The research was titled Direct Sums for Graph Automorphisms. A graph automorphism is a mapping from and to itself that preserves vertex adjacency. We will present examples of graphs whose automorphism group is "easy" to see, and then we will show graphs whose automorphism group is a direct sum. We will also show examples where these techniques are inadequate.

Celebration participants presented their research through a poster display or an oral presentation. Many students expounded on the results of their Senior Inquiry, a multiple-term research project required for most academic programs. Other students shared honors capstone projects or student-faculty research findings. Because of the advanced level of research involved, most of the presenters are upperclass students.

Anne Earel and Stefanie Bluemle, Augustana reference librarians and the event's co-directors, said the Celebration of Learning provided an outlet for students to showcase their accomplishments.

Presentations topics varied greatly and included anthropology, biology, physics, geography, gender studies, theater and more.