Rebekah Herrman (’14)

Rebekah Herrman graduated from CBU in 2014 with a summa cum laude Honors Diploma in a double major of Mathematics and Physics. As a student, she had been active in the Honors Program, in the Mathematical Association of America, the Sigma Pi Sigma and Alpha Chi honor societies, and the Society of Physics Students.

Outside of her academic interests, she served as a September of Service leader for two years. She also served as a resident assistant, a CBU Advising and Registration Leader (CARL), a math tutor, an Honors Program “Big Geek,” a SEARCH Retreat Team Leader, and a Science Olympiad assistant. Rebekah’s Lasallian values were also reflected in her volunteer work at the Beltline Community Center, CBU Campus Ministry, and the CBU Day of Service. All of those selfless activities culminated in her selection as a member of the CBU Lasallian Fellows Class of 2014.

After graduation, Rebekah earned a Master of Science and a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Memphis, where she also earned the Dr. Ralph Faudree Research Award in Mathematics. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and is starting as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Tennessee Space Institute, a branch campus of UTK, in Spring 2022.

Not only is she the product of “quality education,” Rebekah is also dedicated to making it available to others by “teaching minds and touching hearts.” She was selected to participate in the University of Tennessee community engagement academy, which is a professional development program for graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty wherein participants learned about how to engage community members in their scholarship. In graduate school, she was also a graduate student mentor for the CantorSect, which is the University of Memphis undergraduate mathematics club. She was also a peer mentor on the National Science Foundation grant “Promoting Success in Undergraduate Mathematics through Graduate Teacher Training,” a joint project of the University of Memphis, University of Colorado at Denver, and Auburn University.