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astronomy

Jenny McNulty

Jenny McNulty is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jenny McNulty rather than just read about it. In short: Jennifer McNulty is an American mathematician and academic administrator, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research is in combinatorics, specializing in matroid theory and graph theory.

Key takeaways

  • Jenny McNulty belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect Jenny McNulty to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of Jenny McNulty from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jennifer McNulty is an American mathematician and academic administrator, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research is in combinatorics, specializing in matroid theory and graph theory.

Education and career McNulty majored in both chemistry and mathematics at Providence College, a Catholic university in Rhode Island, graduating in 1985. After earning a master's degree in mathematics at Stony Brook University, she completed her Ph.D. in 1993 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation, Affine Hyperplane Arrangements and Oriented Matroids, was supervised by Thomas H. Brylawski. She joined the University of Montana as an assistant professor in 1993, earned tenure there in 1997, and was promoted to full professor in 2004. She was chair of the Pacific Northwest Section of the Mathematical Association of America from 1998 to 2002. She became associate dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at the University of Montana in 2010, and acting dean in 2018. Also in 2018, she traveled to the University of Gondar in Ethiopia as a Fulbright Scholar, working with mathematicians there on curriculum design, mentoring a new group of female faculty with little prior teaching experience that the university had recently hired, and building connections between the University of Gondar and University of Montana. In 2020 she moved from the University of Montana to an affiliated university, the University of Montana Western, as interim provost and vice chancellor of academic and student affairs. She moved to the University of Alaska Anchorage as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

Book With Gary Gordon of Lafayette College, McNulty is the author of the book Matroids: a Geometric Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jenny McNulty

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jenny McNulty claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jenny McNulty before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jenny McNulty ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jenny McNulty

In research
Jenny McNulty appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses Jenny McNulty in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
Jenny McNulty is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American mathematicians, American women academic administrators, American women mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for Jenny McNulty outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jenny McNulty in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what Jenny McNulty means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain Jenny McNulty out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jenny McNulty in simple terms?

Jennifer McNulty is an American mathematician and academic administrator, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research is in combinatorics, specializing in matroid theory and graph theory.

Why does Jenny McNulty matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jenny McNulty?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jenny McNulty.

Tags

  • American mathematicians
  • American women academic administrators
  • American women mathematicians
  • Graph theorists
  • Living people
  • Providence College alumni
  • Stony Brook University alumni
  • University of Alaska Anchorage faculty
  • University of Montana faculty
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni

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