Beyond Numbers: Barry Scholar Nicholas West Finds Beauty in Mathematics

Written by Monica VanDerWeide, ’95

Math. It’s a subject that students either love or hate. But for Nicholas West, ’22, math is so much more than numbers and formulas. It’s a discipline that gives us the fundamental building blocks to solve problems, understand abstract concepts, and develop models to understand other disciplines, all in an orderly, beautiful way. An applied mathematics and physics double major at Hillsdale, Nicholas is currently working on his second master’s degree in mathematics at Oxford University, with an eye toward teaching at the college level someday.

As the youngest of three West brothers who all attended Hillsdale, Nicholas initially wavered between attending a state university to study engineering, or attending Hillsdale where he could study math and physics in the context of the liberal arts. A visit to Hillsdale made the decision easy. “Hillsdale College students are serious about their work and excited about learning,” he said. “Learning for its own sake is exciting.”

That’s a concept that proved true over and over again during Nicholas’s years at Hillsdale as he cited professors and classes that helped him see the beauty and interrelatedness of subjects. “Dr. Gaebler [math] was excited to share interesting problems with our class,” he said. “He emphasized the importance and beauty of carefully crafted definitions. Dr. Dolch [physics] is doing exciting research on the forefront of astronomy. Because you can’t actually observe these astronomical objects, we use sophisticated mathematical models to measure them and understand them. And Dr. Ben Whalen’s Metaphysical Poets course was completely different from what I studied in math and physics courses, but it was a really beautiful class about fundamental human problems, relating to the divine and to love.”

Nicholas took advantage of many opportunities at Hillsdale to engage in further learning and teaching of mathematics. He worked as a math tutor and a teaching assistant. “I appreciated the opportunity to have exposure to the instructor side of math,” he said, “since I want to go into academia.” He also participated in problem-solving competitions, including the Putnam Competition, the Lower Michigan Math Competition, and the Math Modeling Competition, a weekend-long event in which participants are given an intractable problem, such as solving pollution, and then have 48 hours to develop a model and a quantitative assessment of solutions.

“I worked on one about police reports on opioid-related stops,” he said. “Our task was to determine where opioid crises are starting in the U.S. It’s grueling but very fun. I recommend that students interested in applied mathematics participate in these competitions.”

Nicholas also recommends that students interested in graduate school in math or science complete a research internship. The summer before his senior year, he held a full-time, ten-week applied math internship with the U.S. Department of Defense. “I worked on interesting problems and saw how math informs aspects of defense. It was a good first foray into what research is like as an academic.”

As he began the process of applying to graduate programs in math, Nicholas talked to Professor of History Ken Calvert about the Barry Foundation Scholarship, an academic prize that awards full funding for two years of graduate study at Oxford University. Calvert, Hillsdale’s Oxford representative, encouraged him to submit an application to Hillsdale’s committee for review. President Larry Arnn then sent the application on to the Barry Foundation. Nicholas was selected as the winner of the scholarship, becoming the first Hillsdale College student to achieve that honor.

“It’s been really great, almost surreal at times, studying in Oxford,” he said. “People that seemed so distant in textbooks actually lived in places that I’ve visited here. It’s very humbling and exciting.”

In 2023, Nicholas earned his first master’s degree in mathematical modeling and scientific computing from Oxford, and he expects to complete his second master’s in mathematical research in fall 2024. He is in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs in mathematics and hopes to become a college professor upon earning his doctorate. He has found his Hillsdale education extremely advantageous as he works on his graduate degrees.

“The exposure that a Hillsdale education gives you to readings and complex ideas in all subjects beyond just your major, as well as learning how to write papers and construct arguments, has given me a big advantage over my peers,” he said. “At Hillsdale, you can engage with math in a different way because of the interesting dialog between math and other disciplines, as well as the excitement about the subject among professors and students. That approach to learning has been very helpful to me.”

Monica VanDerWeide is Director of Marketing Content for Hillsdale College. She graduated from Hillsdale in 1995 with a degree in English and German.

Published in May 2024