Meet the Candidates - Tom Struppeck

Education:

Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin (Mathematics), 1989

Current Employment:

The University of Texas at Austin, Mathematics Department, Assistant Professor of Instruction

CAS Activities and Publications:

Syllabus and Examination Committee (1997 – present) various roles (Committee member, Pass mark panelist, General Officer, Task Force Chair) mostly focused on the material in and creation of current exams MAS-I and MAS-II.

Current role: Admissions Committee General Officer

CAS Publications:

“Removing Bias -- The SIMEX Procedure” (2017)

“Combining Estimates” (2014)

“The Seventh Game: An Example of Pricing Arbitrage” (2004)

“Correlation” (2003)

“Markovian Annuities” (2001)

“Premium Earning Patterns for Multi-Year Policies” (Awarded the 1999 Reserves Prize)

Other Actuarial Organizations:

SOA: Academic Consultant for their long-term actuarial mathematics exam (2007 – present)
AAA: Served on various Task Forces such as “Financial Crisis” and “Cyber” (2009 – present)

Other Professional Designations:

CERA (2013)
MAAA (1997)
CPCU
ASA

Employment History - Prior Employers:

Drake University – Distinguished Visitor in Risk Management
CIFG
Centre Re
Republic Insurance
Rutgers University
Zycor, Inc.

Membership and Activities in Other Organizations:

CERA
CPCU
SOA Academic Consultant

Civic Activities:

Westcave Preserve, docent
Disability and Access Faculty Advisory Committee
Capital Area Master Naturalist
Hudson Bend Colony Neighborhood Association, treasurer

Other Publications:

Does Really Converge? Infinite Series and p-adic Analysis, (“You can sum some of the series some of the time and some of the series none of the time … but can you sum some of the series all of the time?)”, American Mathematical Monthly (1996) with Edward Burger

Awards and Recognitions:

CAS Above & Beyond Achievement Award (2003)

Reserves Prize (1999)

Other Relevant Information:

All around nice guy.

A board gives the organization guidance; I believe that my combination of industry and academic employment along with my domestic and international experience will strengthen that guidance.

The CAS exam process provides an important pathway for career changers to enter our field. I believe strongly that we must keep the doors open to career changers as the admissions process evolves.

My candidacy is not centered on any specific issue or issues, but rather on the bigger picture topics, such as the following:

• During my 20+ years on the Exam Committee I have seen the demands on committee members grow as the CAS grew. Growth can be good, but it needs to occur in a sustainable way. Our current reliance exclusively on human-graded written-response questions for our upper-level exams does not scale well. I believe that knowledge of some topics can be adequately assessed using question formats that do not require human-grading. While this relatively small change would not completely solve the problem, I believe that it would help.
• Continuing education is an important aspect of any profession. Technological advances in machine learning and new statistical techniques provide ample topics for continuing education for actuaries. I would like to see the CAS be more active in providing such continuing education offerings to its members.
• Our exam system provides an on-ramp for career changers. In my experience, the relatively large number of career changers in the CAS provides us with a broader worldview than we would have without them. It is all too easy to fall into group think – career changers help combat complacency by making us question why we do things the way that we do,