Page-Waters Retirement

Page–Waters Retirement Luncheon, May 2, 2006

Lavon Page and William M. Waters,Jr.

About 35 faculty and staff attended the retirement luncheon for Lavon Page and Bill Waters on May 2, 2006 at the Bowling Alley on Hillsborough Street. Interim Department Head Loek Helminck made a few remarks. John Griggs gave a brief bio of Bill Waters and Steve Shechter did the same for Lavon Page. A summary of their remarks are given below. See also Photo Gallery below.

William Meade Waters, Jr

Bill Waters was born and raised in Atlantic City, NJ - the son of a pastor. He attended Rutgers University from 1952 - 55 and studied engineering. He left school for the army and became a language specialist (Chinese). Kentucky Wesleyan was the next stopping place; Bill graduated with degrees in mathematics and physics and a minor in history. While working on his master's degree in mathematics education at Washington University in St. Louis, he taught mathematics and coached cross country and track at Roosevelt High School.

Bill earned a second master's degree, in mathematics this time, at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. With a Ph.D. in mathematics from Florida State University in hand, he joined the faculty of NC State in the Fall of 1970. He received a joint appointment in Mathematics and Mathematics Education. He will be most remembered for his teaching of the History of Mathematics (MA433) which he has taught exclusively since 1976. Dr. Waters was name a University Outstanding Teacher twice and was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Teachers. He was a charter member of the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics. He has served as Vice President of Colleges Eastern Region for NCCTM and Vice President of Colleges Statewide. He has never missed their annual meeting.

Lavon Page

Lavon Page got his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1968 and joined NC State in 1969. From 1969 until 1982 Page did research in operator theory and wrote 10 papers. From 1982 until 1996 he worked in algorithms for reliability of complex systems and wrote 20 papers in this area. He became Director of the Multi-media Center in 1994 and held that position until 2003. He helped implement the use of MAPLE in undergraduate courses and the use of Web-Assign, a web-based homework delivery, collection, grading and recording system. Page was a pioneer in the development of on-line courses and developed three such courses. He twice won Honorable Mention in the Gertrude Cox Awards for distinguished performance in the use of technology in teaching. In 2004 Page was appointed by the Provost to "head the implementation effort" of NC State's LITRE (Learning in a Technology Rich Environment) program.