Kevin Hutson

Disney is one of my family’s favorite vacation spots. I am an avid roller coaster enthusiast, and both of my sons love thrill rides of all types. So we often spend our Disney vacations getting off and back on Expedition Everest, Test Track, and the like. But before I get into that, let me tell you about my background and my interests in teaching a class on the behind-the-scenes mathematics at Walt Disney World.

I have been at Furman since 2006, and I am a Professor in the Mathematics Department. My academic background includes an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas (my home state), a Master’s and Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from Clemson University. In between my graduate degrees, I spent two years working in industry as an Operations Research Analyst helping a manufacturing company design an efficient operational layout to minimize material movement within a new plant it was building. While in industry I loved working on new and interesting problems, but I found that I wanted more time and independence to really study the mathematics behind the problems, so I went back to school to pursue a Ph.D. emphasizing Operations Research. This industrial experience had a big impact on the types of mathematical research problems that interest me. It also shaped what and how I teach. I’ve found that students are often more motivated to learn hard mathematics if they can see a direct application of their effort. So whenever possible, I try to introduce new mathematical topics with an application of that topic. What appeals to me the most about this May-X course is that at Disney World, the applications are everywhere!

My primary research field is in Combinatorial Optimization. This is an interdisciplinary field that combines the fields of Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, and Management Science. Problems in this area are concerned with the efficient allocation of limited resources to meet some desired objective. For instance, a production scheduler for a manufacturing plant might ask, given a product’s projected demand, how much labor and raw materials are needed to meet that demand while minimizing the cost to the company. At Disney, a vacationer might ask how to schedule her visits to attractions in order to minimize her time waiting in lines or, perhaps, to maximize the number of visits to Tower of Terror! Further, a Disney employee might ask how to allocate families to hotel rooms so as to satisfy the demand and to not disrupt vacations with unnecessary room switching.

I am excited to be able to introduce these types of problems to our students during the May-X course. The wealth of scenarios that can be modeled using mathematics at Walt Disney World makes it a prime location to help students discover how the abstract mathematics they see in the classroom can be applied in the real world. I can’t wait to get started!