Randolph student develops business plan for local food hub

Tu Nguyen ’15 is developing a plan to help grow business for a local nonprofit that grows organic food.

Two days a week, Nguyen bikes about five miles from the Randolph campus to Lynchburg Grows, an urban farm that provides education programs and grows produce to sell in the region. He became acquainted with Lynchburg Grows last semester while taking “Economics of Food and Sustainability,” a class which studies the economic and social factors related to food production and distribution. Impressed by the operation, Nguyen sought an opportunity to work with the organization. “I sent an e-mail to Lynchburg Grows and asked if they had some internships I could do,” he said.

It turned out that there was an opportunity. The nonprofit needs a business plan for establishing a local food hub that would help local farmers sell produce to large customers such as hospitals and schools. “It would be a cross between a farmer’s market and a wholesale distributor,” explained Nate Foust-Meyer, the Lynchburg Grows farm manager and Nguyen’s supervisor. “It’s a model for bringing local farmers together.”

Having Nguyen handle the economic analysis and write the business plan will allow the project to move forward faster while allowing Foust-Meyer and other staff to focus on the farm operations. “It plays to his strengths and what he’s happy doing,” Foust-Meyer said.

Most of Nguyen’s time is spent crunching numbers, such as the cost of growing produce and the wholesale prices that the target market would be willing to pay. But he occasionally takes a break from the business plan to pull weeds and plant seeds in the Lynchburg Grows greenhouses.

Nguyen also is working in another internship, doing marketing work for a local financial planning office which he discovered through Randolph’s Experiential Learning Center. The two internships together are teaching him lessons that he would like to apply someday in a career as a financial advisor. “I am learning how a real business works,” said Nguyen, who is majoring in economics, mathematics, and physics. “This will be a really good experience for me.”

Sending Order Through Chaos: Student examines "Rule 30" math problem

A Randolph College student is using his math and computer programming skills to help solve a puzzling mathematical problem.

Nam Hoang ’15, an engineering physics major, and Marc Ordower, a mathematics professor, are working with Stephen Wolfram’s “Rule 30” to explore ways to keep chaos from disrupting a pattern. When Hoang expressed interest in the Summer Research Program, Ordower suggested working on this problem because it has fascinated him for several years.

This computer simulation demonstrates how Rule 30 can be
applied to a pattern. After enough rows, the pattern (the alternating
on-and-off straight lines) disappears into chaos.

Wolfram’s Rule 30 demonstrates entropy—the move toward chaos. To apply the rule, mathematicians define a pattern in a row of cells that can be either alive or dead. On the next row, the status of each cell depends on the pattern of cells immediately above it. After a few rows, the entire system begins to demonstrate chaos.

Ordower wanted to find out if there is a way to create a pattern that can remain constant over an infinite number of new rows, even as chaos grows around the pattern. If such a pattern does exist, it could have implications for numerous situations, such as sending data electronically. “We transmit data all the time, and some of that data is lost,” Ordower said. “There are lots of people working on how robust you can make a message, and how many resources you need to make a message robust so it arrives correctly.”

Ordower and Hoang are spending most of their research time with pencil and paper trying to devise an algorithm and mathematical proof that would show that there is a pattern that could continue indefinitely. Hoang also has been writing computer programs to help dig deeper into the question. “At first it looked like it was so simple. We were trying to prove that we could send information through chaos,” Hoang said. “It turned out that it was very complicated. I’ve learned to analyze it and understand it.”

Hoang’s efforts have yielded some insight. His computer program discovered a pattern that disappears into chaos, but parts of the pattern emerge again.

Solving a complex problem like this is much larger than a summer project, so Ordower expects he and Hoang will continue seeking an answer even after the Summer Research program completes. He said it is great experience for Hoang, who hopes to become a computer engineer, in working with a mathematics problem that has never been solved, which is the real work of mathematics.

“The bigger mathematics gets, the more open problems there are,” Ordower said. “There are thousands of mathematicians working on millions of open problems around the world.”

No limits: Math, chess, reading, and acting are among new professor's loves

Rob Fisette majored in math in college, but he also spent a great deal of time studying English literature and working on theatre productions. He doesn’t believe in limiting himself—or others—to one discipline.

“My opinion of a liberal arts education is that smart people are smart people everywhere,” said Fisette, who is teaching mathematics at Randolph College this semester.  “They should be able to understand all the numeric aspects of life as well as all the artistic ones.”

“One of the main problems that students have in approaching math is this impression that they have things that they’re good at and things that they’re not good at,” he said. “They classify math in the category of things they aren’t good at because they’ve never had a good experience there.” Fisette hopes to change that for his students.

Fisette, a native of Rhode Island, attended a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. While he had chosen to major in math, he also declared a major in English to help him keep up his love for reading. (His favorite author is Hubert Selby Jr.)

He began acting on stage when a college friend was producing “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” He enjoyed the experience, so he continued participating in theatre. During his senior year, he directed a performance of “Sweeny Todd.”

He said there are many connections between the fields in which he studied and participated. “A lot of the skills that you develop in math really help in studying literature and analyzing problems in any field,” he said.

For example, mathematics teaches the importance of breaking a problem into smaller component parts. “Rather than be overwhelmed by it, just break it down into small parts that are more manageable,” Fisette said. “This is applicable whether you’re analyzing a short story, or you have some role for a play that you're trying to figure out.”

After college, Fisette worked in a mailroom in Chicago. While there, he picked up chess as a hobby to keep his brain active and entertained. After a couple of years, he realized that he was missing school and mathematics, so he prepared for graduate school and attended the University of Oregon.  He wrote his dissertation about algebraic curves.

Fisette is teaching at Randolph this semester while mathematics professor Yesem Kurt is on sabbatical.

When he isn’t teaching, Fisette’s main hobby is chess, and he also enjoys cribbage, racquetball, reading, and biking.