Scientific Success...Kyle Earp earns two degrees at Tarleton

BY ANNABETH JOHNSON

Multimedia Journalist

From his first steps on the Tarleton State University campus, graduating senior Kyle Earp knew he had found his new home for the next four years.

Earp graduated from a small high school in Florence, Texas, which played a part in his choice to attend Tarleton due to the university’s smaller size and a scholarship he was awarded.

He was not the first in his family to bleed purple, as his older brother graduated from Tarleton in 2016 with two degrees, one in chemistry and the other in biology.

Earp himself will be walking the stage on May 17 at 9 a.m. to receive his two diplomas in mathematics and computer science.

Growing up, he always enjoyed mathematics and loved learning about it and applying it. In his senior year of high school, he decided that he wanted to pursue a mathematics degree, but his plans expanded.

In his third semester at college, he would choose to double major and add computer science as his second major.

“During my senior year of high school, I took my first programming class, and I fell in love with it,” Earp said. “So I was torn between taking either a computer science degree or a mathematics, and I asked myself why not both.”

Earp’s classes had a lot of overlap, so his plan to double major worked out in his favor.

During his time at Tarleton, Earp was involved in numerous organizations.

He has been a student tutor at the Math Achievement Center (MAC) since the second semester of his freshman year.

In order to be eligible to apply for this position, you have to have a B in calculus 1, which Earp easily obtained.

“It really helped me build connections with other math majors,” Earp said. “It helped me strengthen my knowledge in the early mathematics and helped to keep my knowledge fresh throughout my schooling here.”

Earp was also very involved in Paradigm Student Ministries as a Challenge Leader for about two years.

Within Paradigm, Challenge Leaders—a pair assigned to each group—teach lessons based on passages from the Holy Bible that each Challenge Group reads together.

Earp got promoted in his final semester to guide a Leader to Leader (L2L) group that gives out lesson plans to the Challenge Leaders.

Mackenzie Watson has known Earp for about two years and shares what she admires most about him during the time she has known him.

“The way he intentionally loves people around him in such a caring and intentional way,” Watson said. “Seeing him go from a challenge leader to an L2L leader really put him in a position to show what he normally wouldn’t share with people. He really took that step and became the leader everyone knew he could be.”

Lizzie Wood met Earp around three years ago and got to lead their L2L group with him in his last semester of college – getting to first hand witness his positive qualities and growth.

“He is really humble. He is also a great teacher and so service-oriented,” Wood said. “He just wants to serve people, and he really lives that out in his life. I’ve seen him before he ever interviewed and wanted to lead, and as he kind of figured that out and now getting to lead a group with him, I’ve seen him grow exponentially in his confidence and spiritually knowing Jesus and living that out daily.”

Along with Paradigm, Earp was also a part of the Honors College.

After entering college with too many core classes completed, he ended up having honors contracts in two of his math classes, where he did extra work on top of regular coursework.

Earp’s Honors contracts consisted of mathematical proofs.

“A proof is where you take a statement, and you don’t know whether it’s true or not,” Earp said. “Using assumptions that you state, you show that that statement is true.”

Starting the spring semester of his sophomore year, he was also a student researcher for the College of Math and Science and worked with Dr. Chris Mitchell and Dr. Scott Cook.

As a Student Researcher, he helped Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Cook with their disease modeling research, where they worked to improve methods to estimate parameters for Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) systems of disease spread.

Differential equations are equations that describe how a function changes at a time.

Earp reviewed a system of ODE that describes how people move between different illness diagnosis classes.

A person starts as susceptible, then gets exposed to a disease, so now they are infected, and after some time, they recover.

“We have equations that model how people move in that population,” Earp said. “The hard part is finding parameters that fit that system to a set of data. We were working on Bayesian methods to improve those equations.”

Earp was also a band member for two semesters and has been playing the saxophone since high school. He wasn’t sure about time requirements for his classes, so he held off from band for a semester.

In the spring, Earp decided to join the University Band, which is a spring-only band that is for students who just want to have fun or maybe work on a second instrument.

The following fall semester, he played for the Symphonic Band, which is a full-year band, but because of his class restrictions, Earp only stayed for the fall semester.

Along with his academics, Earp enjoys reading.

“The amount of books I’ve read has fluctuated in college, but it’s something that I can always go back to,” Earp said.

He also spends his free time occasionally playing video games or spending quality time with his friends.

During his college career, Earp’s greatest obstacle was time management.

On average, he took 16 hours each semester and had to find a way to balance his academics with his social life and job.

He had to figure out how to allocate time for different things and estimate how long something might take in order to set aside time to complete that task.

“Navigating social life, too, was a hardship. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in high school,” Earp said. “I’ve always been introverted. Introversion is just how you recover. Introverted people recover by themselves; extroverted people get energy from being around other people. I’m introverted, but I’ve become better at hanging out with people and initiating friendships.”

Although she has only known Earp for over a year, Lily Small shares her appreciation for him.

“Kyle is genuinely one of the nicest people I have ever met,” Small said. “Every single time I walk into a room, he makes sure I feel welcome. He has gotten so much more comfortable around other people. He has always been so powerful in his faith and confident in letting people know how loved they are.”

Also having a newer friendship with Earp for around a year,  Kason Miller recognizes the many admirable qualities that Earp has shared with him.

“Kyle is a phenomenal historian whenever it comes down, not only to scripture but random historical facts,” Miller said. “I’ve watched him be able to step out of a comfort zone that he had from being really soft spoken to leading an L2L group which in turn leads other groups.”

Once graduated, Earp plans to attend the University of Texas at Arlington to pursue a doctorate in mathematics.

He will start in August and will be a member of their research training group, which is a National Science Foundation-funded program.

The training program Earp will be a member of is the Vertically Integrated Inter-Disciplinary Training in Mathematics for Human Health.

“We are looking at cancer biology, computational neurology, vector-borne diseases and how to research those topics and how to research in general,” Earp said. “It is a two year program, but I will carry the research until I graduate.”

Taking a look at the past four years, Earp leaves some advice for his freshman self.

“Have fun. I remember the fall semester of my freshman year, I spent a lot of time in my dorm room. It wasn’t until the next semester and the years following that I actually made friends and started enjoying my time here. So just get out there. Have fun,” Earp said.

With four years at Tarleton to be greatly proud of and a very bright future ahead, one can only congratulate and celebrate Kyle Earp in his past and future achievements.