On July 25-26, the department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences hosted a conference on campus to honor three recent retirees: Bill Cherowitzo, Rich Lundgren, and Stan Payne—all of whom are now Professor Emeritus. The Rocky Mountain Conference on Graphs, Geometry, and Combinatorics was playfully deemed the CheLuPa Fest this year (for Cherowitzo, Lundgren and Payne).

The conference covered three of the main pillars of discrete mathematics (graph theory, geometry, and combinatorics) representing the work of the three individuals whom the conference honored. In addition to promoting mathematical research Cherowitzo, Lundgren, and Payne also modeled the importance of mathematics pedagogy, and in this spirit the conference organizers solicited 20 minute talks related to both mathematical research and to the teaching of collegiate level discrete mathematics.

Some statistics on the Professors Emeritus Cherowitzo, Lundgren and Payne celebrated by the department:

• A combined 94 years of faculty time at CU Denver, (31/35/28)
• 122 years of faculty time overall, (time after PhD,) (31/43/48)
• Over 75% (94/122) of their time after PhD was at CU Denver, (100%/81%/58%)
• A combined 214 publications in peer reviewed journals, (23/85/106)
• A combined average about 1.75 publications a year for 122 years, (0.74/1.98/2.21)
• A total 19 CU Denver PhD students supervised (3/12/4)