Deirdre Smeltzer

Deirdre Longacher Smeltzer (born 1964)^[1] is an American mathematician, mathematics educator, textbook author, and academic administrator. A former professor, dean, and vice president at Eastern Mennonite University, she is Senior Director for Programs at the Mathematical Association of America.^[2]

Smeltzer was a mathematics major at Eastern Mennonite University, graduating in 1987 with a minor in Bible study. At Eastern Mennonite, mathematicians Millard Showalter and Del Snyder became faculty mentors, encouraging her to continue in advanced mathematics.^[3] She went on to graduate study in mathematics at the University of Virginia, earning a master's degree^[3] and completing her Ph.D. in 1994, with the dissertation Topics in Difference Sets in 2-Groups on difference sets in group theory, supervised by Harold Ward.^[4]

She became a faculty member at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic university in Saint Paul, Minnesota,^[3][5] before returning to Eastern Mennonite University as a faculty member in 1998.^[5] She chaired the mathematical sciences department from 2005 to 2012.^[3] As an undergraduate at Eastern Mennonite, she had participated in a cross-cultural visit to China,^[5] and as a faculty member, she led another such visit in 2013,^[5][6] and became director of cross-cultural programs for the university. In 2013, she was named the university's vice president and undergraduate dean.^[3] In that position, she led the university's creation of new programs in political science and global studies,^[7] among others.^[5]

She stepped down from her administrative positions at Eastern Mennonite in 2019,^[5] and joined the Mathematical Association of America as Senior Director for Programs in 2020.^[2]

Smeltzer is the coauthor of two undergraduate textbooks in mathematics: Methods for Euclidean Geometry (with Owen Byer and Felix Lazebnik, Mathematical Association of America, 2010)^[8] and Journey into Discrete Mathematics (with Owen Byer and Kenneth Wantz, MAA Press, 2018).^[9]