Garth Isaak

Biography

I am a professor and department chair in the mathematics department at Lehigh University, spouse to psychologist Melissa Hunt (her books on coping with IBS and IBD) and proud parent of Ian Arthur Hunt-Isaak (born spring 1995), applied physics graduate student, and Noah Cushman Hunt-Isaak (born fall 1997), software developer and Anna Rose Megui Hunt-Isaak (born fall 2003, adopted fall 2004), undergraduate student at McGill.  

My undergraduate degree is from Bethel College in Kansas (where my grandfather was once an English Professor), in 1984 with a triple major; in Chemistry, Mathematical Sciences and Physics and a minor in Peace Studies. My advisors were Arnold Wedel and Richard Rempel in math and Carl Helrich in physics. After teaching mathematics, statistics, computer science and physics (yes 4 courses in different fields in 1 year) at Bethel and Heston College I went on to doctoral studies. My Ph.D. in 1990 is from the interdisciplinary center RUTCOR (Rutgers Center for Operations Research) at Rutgers University. My dissertation advisor was Fred Roberts. I was the fourth student to complete a degree in this (then new) program. 

I spent 2 postdoctoral years as a John Wesley Young Research instructor at Dartmouth College, working with Ken Bogart. Since 1992 I have taught at Lehigh University where I am now a professor. From 2012 to 2022 I was for 4 years the college of arts and science associate dean for graduate studies and then for 6 years chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. I am happily now a math professor with no administrative duties.