Eileen Poiani
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Eileen Louise Poiani is an American mathematician. She was the first female mathematics instructor at Saint Peter's University in New Jersey, where she is a professor of mathematics, former vice president, and special assistant to the president of the university. She was the first female president of Pi Mu Epsilon.
Poiani grew up as a fourth-generation resident of Nutley, New Jersey, where she graduated from Nutley High School. She was an undergraduate in the Douglass Residential College of Rutgers University,[1] earning Phi Beta Kappa honors,[2] and remained at Rutgers for graduate study in mathematics.[1] Her 1971 doctoral dissertation, Mean Cesaro Summability of Laguerre and Hermite Series and Asymptotic Estimates of Laguerre and Hermite Polynomials, concerned Cesàro summation, Laguerre polynomials, and Hermite polynomials; her doctoral advisor was Benjamin Muckenhoupt, the namesake of Muckenhoupt weights.[3]
Career
In 1967, before she completed her doctorate, Poiani joined the Saint Peter's University faculty as a mathematics instructor. This was one year after Saint Peter's University had begun admitting women, and Poiani became the university's first female mathematics instructor, and one of only seven women on the university faculty. She taught mathematics for 35 years,[1] and was named a full professor in 1980.[2] Saint Peter's is a Jesuit school, and Poiani was an early advocate of attention to the principle of cura personalis in Jesuit higher education.[4] She has also been described as having "passionate interest in promoting the status of women and minorities in mathematics".[5]
In 2000, after long-time service to the university as Executive Assistant to the President and Assistant to the President for Planning, she became the university's vice president for student affairs, and the university's first female vice president.[2] In 2011 she became special assistant to the president.[6]
