* Honoured as American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) Fellow and is also a recipient of a 2020 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring
* “With nearly 50 years in academia — almost 40 of those at Auburn — Overtoun Jenda has left a mark on the field of mathematics and thousands of students that’s impossible to calculate”
By Duncan Mlanjira
Malawian mathematics Professor at USA’s Auburn University, Overtoun Jenda, has been honoured as American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) Fellow — one of the highest honours in the scientific world.
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On its website, Auburn University reports that AAAS considers Jenda — is also a recipient of a 2020 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring — worthy of one of the scientific community’s highest honors.
“With nearly 50 years in academia — almost 40 of those at Auburn University — Overtoun Jenda has left a mark on the field of mathematics and thousands of students that’s impossible to calculate.”
Jenda is Auburn’s professor of mathematics and assistant provost for special projects and is also a regular visitor mathematics department at Mzuzu University (MZUNI), through which he set up a visiting/exchange programme between MZUNI and Auburn University.
In 2011, Jenda founded the Southern Africa Mathematical Sciences Association (Masamu) — a project for research collaboration.
Jenda earned a Bachelor’s of Science with Distinction in Mathematics from the University of Malawi (UNIMA) and went on to attain his PhD from the University of Kentucky in 1981.
Auburn University explains that AAAS — one of the world’s largest scientific societies and publisher of the ‘Science’ family of journals — named 471 scientists, engineers and innovators to its 2024 class of Fellows across 24 disciplines.
“Jenda is recognised in the mathematics section, and Haibo Zoe, also from the College of Sciences and mathematics is named in the geology and geography section. They are the only two members of the new class from the state of Alabama.
The website quotes Sudip S. Parikh — AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the ‘Science’ journals as saying: “This year’s class of fellows are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities.
“At a time when the future of the scientific enterprise in the US and around the world is uncertain, their work demonstrates the value of sustained investment in science and engineering.”
The report further says Jenda — along with his fellow new fellows — will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin; representing science and engineering, respectively and will be celebrated at a forum in Washington, D.C. on June 7.
Auburn reports that Jenda joined Auburn in 1988 from the University of Kentucky, where he earned two graduate degrees and taught mathematics and since his arrival, “he has worked his way up the professor ranks, taught undergraduate and graduate classes and conducted research in homological algebra and commutative algebra”.
“He has also held various administrative roles, including department chair, associate dean and associate provost, to support the advancement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.
“The AAAS recognised Jenda for his research in homological algebra and commutative algebra and for extensive mentoring and service for the advancement of mathematics, both nationally and internationally.”
Jenda tells Auburn media that homological algebra is a branch of mathematics used to study the shape and structure of objects, spaces or complex systems — and the relationships between them.
It draws on tools from commutative algebra to help compute things like the number of holes in an object or to distinguish between different systems.
Such research isn’t theoretical; Jenda said it provides scientists and mathematicians with practical tools needed to solve complex problems in areas such as quantum physics, data science, neuroscience, game theory, statistics and robotics.
“Jenda’s work in these areas has led to the development and introduction of new algebraic structures, namely the Gorenstein injective, Gorenstein projective and Gorenstein flat modules that continue to be studied by researchers from around the world.
“He proudly made these contributions alongside his former professor at Kentucky, Edgar Enochs, a trailblazer in homological algebra who retired a decade ago after 48 years.
“Jenda remains dedicated to developing new techniques in both commutative and homological algebra to better understand algebraic structures that generalize classical injective, projective and flat modules.”
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The University reports that these days, Jenda uses weekends and summer months to continue his research — though he still teaches, “albeit less than in years past.
“Most of his time is devoted to serving as executive director of the Office of Special Projects and Initiatives and its SPARK STEM Institute. The office and its programming exist to advance STEM education and related areas locally, nationally and internationally.
“One of the office’s projects is ‘strengthening pathways and research knowledge’ in STEM (SPARK STEM), which aims to provide educators from K-12 through higher education with the tools to attract, retain and graduate more students in STEM disciplines.
“I strongly believe that as an administrator from the faculty ranks, I need to be engaged in research and instruction, and I plan to continue to do so,” Jenda is quoted as saying.
“Mentoring students across many different scholarship and retention programs for over 30 years has allowed us to create and tweak a model for mentoring that provides students with faculty and peer mentoring, academic and social support and research and conference opportunities,” he said.
For Jenda, AAAS fellow status is quite an honor, but nothing beats student success. No matter his role or objective, students remain Jenda’s top priority.
“It has been rewarding to serve as a faculty mentor in these programs and to see the impacts of students successfully navigating through STEM degree programs and into graduate programs and the STEM workforce,” he said. “That’s what makes it all worthwhile.”
Reacting to this news, renowned Malawian filmmaker and producer, Charles Shemu Joyah shared on a WhatsApp group of like minds that Jenda was his mathematics lecturer in year 3 and 4 at Chancellor College (1981-1982) — “mainly lecturing in real and complex analysis”.
“He had just come back with his PhD in mathematics from the University of Kentucky,” he continued. “An incredibly brilliant person; one of his most amazing traits was that during those two years he taught me, he never came to the lecture room with notes — he just brought a piece of chalk, and then for the next hour, he would teach and fill the board with notes straight from his head!
Award winning Malawian filmmaker Shemu Joyah
“Mathematics can be daunting, particularly real and complex analysis, number theory and algebraic structures, but Dr. Jenda made it so much fun to learn. He never lost patience with a student struggling to understand, and always found ways to explain complex issues in a manner that we would be able to understand.
“The man simply enjoyed teaching. He lived maths, dreamt maths, and talked maths. Given that mathematics was the language God used to create the world and physics was the grammar, God — after resting on the seventh day — had molded Jenda in a mathematical crucible turned white-hot with gamma rays, quantum mechanics and differential equations that proved that parallel lines met at infinity, and then gifted him to Malawi, where, unfortunately, his boundless intellect would be least appreciated.
“Thus, I was not surprised that a year after I had graduated in 1982, I heard that he had left. I felt sad that we were not able to keep such a man, but felt happy for him, for he was a flower that needed a space where it would blossom.
“Therefore, I am not surprised that he went on to distinguish himself as an outstanding mathematician, lecturer, and mentor,” Shemu Joyah wrote.
