Academic and Career Accomplishments
Judy Newhauser-Holdener was an artistic child with a love of drawing, puzzles and games. After finishing high school she attended Kent State University, taking .courses in art, math, physics and chemistry while teaching English as a second language to internationals associated with the university. In 1986, she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and in the spring of 1987, she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BS in mathematics. She began her doctoral study in mathematics the following fall, earning her a Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Illinois-Urbana, while teaching mathematics at the university and aerobics at a local fitness center. Judy married her husband Eric Holdener, a paleontologist, in 1993, and they moved to Colorado Springs, CO in 994, where Judy started her professional academic career as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the United States Air Force Academy. She won the Instructor of the Year Award and the Tony M. Johnson Teaching Award in her first year of teaching.
In 1997, Judy moved back to Ohio to join the Mathematics Department at Kenyon College in Gambier. At Kenyon she teaches courses in calculus, proof-writing, complex analysis, algebra and number theory. Although her primary research interests reside in number theory, she has mentored undergraduate research projects in algebra, number theory, dynamical systems and mathematical biology. This work has been presented at national meetings and published in research journals. In 2003, Judy was awarded Kenyon’s Tomsich Science Award and the Board of Trustees Junior Teaching Award. In 2007, she received Kenyon’s John B. McCoy Distinguished Teaching Chair and in 2008 Judy received the Mathematical Association of America Ohio Section Distinguished Teaching Award. From 2008-11, she served as the Chair of Kenyon’s Mathematics Department. Judy has spent sabbatical years at the University of Colorado in Boulder (2004-05) and at Carnegie Mellon. University in Pittsburgh, PA (2012-13). In the summer of 2012, she taught a quantitative methods course in the Masters of Public Policy programs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, MA. Judy and her husband have two sons, Chase and Max Holdener.