For senior Cole Swain, choosing the University of Montevallo was easy because of his family ties to the school and the generous financial aid offerings.
“My grandfather came here in the 1970s, and my brother was here before me,” he said. “He got the Montevallo Ambassador Program Scholarship (M.A.P.S.), so I decided to apply for it also and I got it. That kind of sealed the deal.”
Hailing from Holly Springs, North Carolina, Swain is majoring in mathematics with a minor in computer science. He was once interested in the aerospace engineering field, choosing the math major with the intention of entering UM’s dual-degree engineering program. However, his passion for math became so strong that he chose to stick with it.
A moment that made Swain realize he belonged at Montevallo was getting to pitch his idea for undergraduate research to Dr. Benton Tyler, professor of mathematics.
“He didn’t have to think about it,” he said. “He was just like ‘yeah, of course we’ll do it.’ At other schools, you might not even know who your professors are because they don’t have time to talk to you. But here, you’re able to speak to your professors and, in my case, do research with my professor.”
Under Tyler’s guidance, Swain, along with his former classmate Michael Doerfler ’23, has been researching tilings and square tilings, enumerating a lower bound for the number of visible tilings that have an even number of squares. The three wrote a research paper titled “Enumerating Visible Tilings,” which was published in Geombinatorics Quarterly, a scientific journal of mathematics, in October.
“We just wanted to do research, and Michael jumped in because he was interested also,” he said. “It started off with us just hanging out in the classroom, talking about math for a little bit to learn the area that we were going to research in. We found some questions to answer for research, and we eventually discovered some new things.”
Swain has also presented his research at the Southeastern Regional COPLAC Undergraduate Research Conference, the Mathematical Association of America’s Southeastern Section Meeting and twice at the Troy University MathFest.
Through UM’s Undergraduate Research Program, Swain learned about Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), programs offered by universities and organizations that provide opportunities for valuable hands-on research to undergraduate students in various fields. As they tend to be selective, Swain had to apply multiple times before being accepted into one. This past summer, he spent around two months furthering his research in an REU at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
“I realized how fun math could be,” he said. “We would be doing math pretty much 40 hours a week, and I never really got tired of it. I would go home and still end up working on the math that we were doing with my roommates. It was probably one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life.”
Outside of undergraduate research, Swain is co-president of Math Club, vice president of Kappa Mu Epsilon Honor Society, president of Astronomy Club, head Montevallo Master and a student worker in the Central Calendar Office. This year, he was chosen as Senior Elite for mathematics. One of his favorite memories from his time here was serving as assistant technical director for Purple Side’s 2023 College Night production, “Cryptid Conspiracy: The Lost Episode.”
After graduation, Swain aims to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics and would like to return to the bricks as a professor one day.
