21 April 2005

Defenses

Another busy day today. I was sitting down for the defenses of two Honors undergraduates. One was a student who I supervised, Yajaira, who gave a very confident presentation. You would never have known we were making changes to her presentation only 20 or 30 minutes before her talk! After her defense, I learned she was a former Miss Rio Grande Valley or some such thing. Explains the poise; she's used to standing in front of people.

Second student was Tina, who actually did most of her research off at Louisiana State University as a summer research project. She also did a good job, although we were lamenting a bit about the level of assistance she got from her supervisor at LSU. It sounds like her supervisor may not have given her quite as much help as she could have. But as someone always pressed for time myself, I can see how that would happen.

But my contributions are nothing compared to my colleague Scott Gunn, who is either supervising or being on the committee for sixteen, count 'em, sixteen undergraduate Honors thesis. He broke the old record of twelve in one semester, a record that was previously held by... himself! And yes, he was on the committee for both of the students today.

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