Kieval Lecture

Join us for the 82nd Kieval Lecture

Dr. Adriana Salerno will deliver the 82nd Harry S. Kieval Lecture at Cal Poly Humboldt on Thursday, October 9, 2025. The lecture will take place at 7:00 p.m. in Room 135 of the Science-B Building on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus. The public is welcome to this free lecture, which is geared toward a general audience. 

Title: The Stories We Tell

Abstract: Stories are how we make sense of our world and ourselves. In a mathematics classroom, whether we notice it or not, we tell stories – about what mathematics is and who it’s for. Additionally, each person in that classroom (teachers and students) brings in their own stories and experiences with mathematics. In this talk, I will share how acknowledging and making room for different stories has shaped my classroom, informed my work as a federal employee, and helped me make "good trouble." And of course, there will be stories.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Adriana Salerno is a past Vice-President of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and previously held the position of professor of mathematics at Bates College in Maine. At Bates College, Dr. Salerno served as department chair and chair of the university's Diversity Action Team. She received the MAA's prestigious Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics in 2023. Dr. Salerno was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela where she studied mathematics at the Universidad Simón Bolívar. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin in the area of number theory. Her scholarly work explores the intersection of number theory with geometry, physics, coding theory, and cryptography. She has given courses and classes at diverse locations including a mini-course on p-adic numbers in Dangbo, Benin, a class on lattices and cryptography in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and a class on algebraic number theory in Şirince, Turkey.

For more information, click on Kieval_Lecture_Flyer_F25

Previous lecturers in this series

• Michael Dorff (details) Fall 2024 (Brigham Young University)
• Edray Goins (details) Fall 2023 (Pomona College)
• Glen Van Brummelen (details) Spring 2023 (Trinity Western University)
• Pamela E. Harris (details) Fall 2022 (University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee)
• Jesus De Loera (video) Spring 2022 (UC Davis)
• Stephen Trettel (video) Fall 2021 (Stanford University)
• Richard Schwartz (details) Spring 2020 (Brown University)
• Zvezdelina Stankova (details) Fall 2019 (UC Berkeley)
• Frank Farris (details) Spring 2019 (Santa Clara University)
• Alon Amit (details) Fall 2018 (Origami Logic)
• Gigliola Staffilani (details) Spring 2018 (MIT)
• Ken Ono (details) Fall 2017 (Emory University)
• Francis Su (details) Spring 2017 (Harvey Mudd College)
• Erica Flapan (details) Fall 2016 (Pomona College)
• Bernd  Sturmfels (details) Spring 2016 (University of California at Berkeley)
• Federico Ardila (details) Fall 2015 (San Francisco State University)
• Margot Gerritsen (details) Spring 2015 (Stanford University)
• Benson Farb (details) Fall 2014 (University of Chicago)
• Tim Chartier (details) Spring 2014 (Davidson College North Carolina)
• Alan Schoenfeld (details) Fall 2013 (University of California at Berkeley)
• Abigail Thompson (details) Spring 2013 (University of California at Davis)
• Robert Bryant (details) Fall 2012 (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute)
• William G. McCallum (details) Spring 2012 (University of Arizona)
• Kenneth Ribet (details) Fall 2011 (University of California at Berkeley)
• David Pengelley (details) Spring 2011 (New Mexico State University)
• Alice Silverberg (details) Fall 2010 (University of California at Irvine)
• Robert J. Lang (details) Spring 2010
• Kenneth Golden (details) Fall 2009 (University of Utah)
• Tony DeRose (details) Spring 2009 (Pixar Studios)
• Underwood Dudley (details) Fall 2008 (DePauw University)
• Donald Albers (details) Spring 2008 (Mathematical Assoc of America Books)
• C. Edward Sandifer (details) Fall 2007 (Western Connecticut State University)
• Melanie Wood (details) Spring 2007 (Princeton University)
• Jerald Marsden (details) Fall 2006 (California Institute of Technology)
• Deborah Ball (details) Spring 2006 (University of Michigan)
• Majorie Senechal (details) Fall 2005 (Smith College)
• Joe Gallian (details) Spring 2005 (University of Minnesota Duluth)
• Jennifer Quinn (details) Fall 2004 (Occidental College)
• John Conway (details) Spring 2004 (Princeton University)
• Persi Diaconis (details) Fall 2003, (Stanford University)
• Hyman Bass (details) Spring 2003 (U. of Michigan)
• Ann E.Watkins (details) Fall, 2002 (CSU Northridge)
• Ed Burger (details) Spring, 2002 (Williams  College)
• Michael E. Moody (details) Fall, 2001 (Harvey Mudd College)
• Richard Tapia (details) Spring, 2001 (Rice University)
• Noam D. Elkies (details) Fall, 2000 (Harvard University)
• Victor Katz (details) Spring, 2000 (University of the District of Columbia)
• Arthur Benjamin (details) Fall, 1999 (Harvey Mudd College)
• Thomas Banchoff (details) Spring, 1999 (Brown University)
• Frank Giordano (details) Fall, 1998 (COMAP)
• Robert L. Devaney (details) Spring, 1998 (Boston University)
• Sherman Stein (details) Fall, 1997 (UC Davis)
• Ron Graham (details) Spring, 1997
• David Hoffman (details) Fall, 1996 (MSRI, Berkeley)
• Doris Schattschneider (details) Spring, 1996 (Moravian College)
• Herbert Keller (details) Fall, 1995 (Cal. Inst. of Technology)
• Keith J. Devlin Spring, 1995 (Saint Mary's College)
• Deb Hughes Hallett (Harvard) and Jerry Uhl  (U of Ill.) Fall, 1994
• Gil Strang Spring, 1994(MIT)
• Carlos Castillo-Chavez Fall, 1993 (Cornell)
• Judith Grabiner (details) Spring, 1993 (Pitzer College).
• Judith Tanur (details) Fall, 1992 (SUNY, Stony Brook)
• Margaret Cozzins Spring, 1992 (Northeastern U.)
• Saunders MacLane Fall, 1991 (Univ. of Chicago)
• Branko Grunbaum Spring, 1991 (Univ. of Washington)
• Robert Moses Fall, 1990
• George Dantzig Spring, 1990 (Stanford Univ.)
• Reuben Hersh Fall, 1989 (Univ. of NM)
• Ralph Boas Spring, 1989 (Northwestern Univ.)
• Leon Henkin Fall, 1988 (U.C., Berk.)
• Mary Ellen Rudin Spring, 1988(Univ. of Wisconsin)
• Constance Reid Fall, 1987
• Kenneth Arrow Spring, 1987 (Stanford Univ.)
• Peter Hilton Fall, 1986 (SUNY, Binghamton)
• Gerard Debreu Spring, 1986 (U.C.,Berk.)
• Raymond Smullyan Fall, 1985 (Ind. U.)
• Paul Halmos Spring, 1985 (Univ.of Santa Clara)
• Richard Hamming Winter, 1985 (Naval Postgrad.)
• Victor Klee Spring, 1984 (Univ. of Washington)
• Ivan Niven Fall, 1983 (Univ. of Oregon)
• Ronald Graham Spring, 1983 (Bell Labs)