Every year St. Mary’s fields a team for the William Lowell Putnam math competition.
The competition is held on the first Saturday of December, the exam consists of 12 difficult problems to be done over the course of six hours.
Awards include over $100,000 in cash and a free graduate education at Harvard. For St. Mary’s students, the St. Mary’s Math Foundation awards the Putnam Prize to the student earning the highest score. The amount of the award is $10 for each point the student earns.
Every fall we offer a one-credit seminar course as preparation for the Putnam Exam (Math 391). In addition to a lot of problem-solving skills, the seminar reviews math concepts from all sorts of courses (and some concepts you’ll never see in a course). All students in the seminar take the Putnam, but many students who aren’t in the seminar also choose to participate.
2001 marked the first year (and first victory!) in our rivalry with Gettysburg College. The winning team, determined by the sum of all students’ scores, is the keeper of the Putnam Lamp. We took honors in 2001 by a 21-0 margin. In 2002 we lost the lamp by a 56-39 margin, before winning it back on 2003’s tough test, 16-8. In 2004 we cleaned up, thanks to Peter’s fabulous exam, and we have not lost since. Go Seahawks! 2010 marked the first Putnam Rally, an athletics-style event to get participants excited about the exam.
We had over 50 students turn out to cheer on the Putnam Team.
Past years’ winners:
- Josh Kaminsky and Caroline VanBlargan (2012)
- Jennifer Kunze (2011)
- Demetre Kazaras (2010)
Past Year’s Teams:
2012 Putnam Team (new record: #71 team ranking out of 578 teams!)
Laura Andre, Ryland Newman, Seth Baker, Nick Pasko, Gary Beverungen, Jeremy Perrin, Paul Conant, Pasquale Raico, Tristan Epp-Schmidt, David Rice, Monica Gillis, Dan Savelle, Toby Hall, Michael Shaughnessy, Shannon Hammerlund, Emily Smith, Ella Hankins, Marissa Smith, Galen Hench, Nora Stack, Joseph Hood, Justin Stine, Josh Kaminsky, Kevin Tennyson, Owen Kelly, Dani Thorne, Billy Kimmel, Caroline VanBlargan, Jonathan Kwolek, Mike Warburton, Alicia LeBerre