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I participated in my
second to
last Board of Governors’ meeting at MathFest in San Jose, CA in August
2007. It was by far the shortest meeting
I attended. It was efficient as well.
It was a good meeting and the reports on the usual issues (financial, publications, AMC, membership, committees) were, for the most part, positive. Simply said, the MAA is in good shape. However, the Budget Committee reported a proposed deficit for the 2008 operating budget. The deficit reflects a 3% drop in membership, attributed to the new dues structure, and a drop in indirect costs from federal grants. Book sales, particularly those through Amazon, remain strong. The MAA recognizes a need for new revenue sources.
As you may know, the MAA has been going through a series of Strategic Planning cycles in an attempt to examine key elements of the Association's work in light of its mission. The Board of Governors has been participating in the process in several ways - by having focus groups, for example, and by directing the Executive Committee on what it sees as priorities for study. The final reports of these committees are available to MAA members at www.maa.org/aboutmaa/sp.
The three topics chosen by the Board for Cycle III
are:
Meetings, Sections, and STEM-related issues in Mathematics. The third cycle is ready to begin. I have been
invited (and I accepted) to be on the working group for Sections. My first meeting is in DC later this
fall. Please feel free to contact me
with any thoughts about how sections could work better to serve needs
of MAA
members.
Ivars Peterson, the new Director of Publications for Journals and Communications, reminded all of us to check MAA Online often to keep up-to-date with mathematical activities. He is also looking for suggestions from members on novel programs that exist within our sections.
Hope to see many of you in San Diego on January 6,
2008.
The 75th Annual Spring Meeting of the MAA-Wisconsin Section was hosted by UW-Eau Claire the weekend of April 20-21, 2007. We celebrated 300th Anniversary of Euler's Birth by arranging seven talks and one invited address related to the works of Euler. I would like to thank all of those who helped make last spring’s section meeting the exciting and stimulating event that it was. In particular, I would like to thank the site coordinator, Simei Tong, and the entire mathematics department at UW-Eau Claire for the work they did to take care of local arrangements. My sincere thanks goes to our Public Information Officer, Ben Collins, for cooperating with me in putting together this wonderful program.
I
would also like to thank all of our speakers, from students to invited
guests.
The attendance at the meeting was excellent. According
to our Treasurer/Secretary, Mark Snavely, a total of 220 people
registered for the meeting. Of those, 87 were undergraduate students.
The data shows
that the number of participants (students and non-students) was up this
year
from previous year. There were plenty of student talks, and we hope to
see that
trend continue.
Congratulations to Dr.
Robert L. Wilson of
UW-Madison who was awarded our section's distinguished teaching award
at the
Spring Section meeting at
Four local
teachers
received Teaching award. Scott Swita (from Granton), and Sue Maenner
(from
Altoona), received teaching awards for excellence in teaching High
School mathematics.
Susan Poulda (from Gilman), and Barbara Retzloff (from Strum), were
both
recognized for excellence in middle grades mathematics education.
The spring 2008 meeting will be held at Madison Area Technical College (MATC) on April 25-26. Andrew Matchett of UW-La Crosse is the chair-elect and has been hard at work preparing for the meeting. We welcome his return to the executive board.
Let me close by thanking the executive committee for all their support, and offer special thanks to J. Sriskandarajah, and Mark Snavely in guiding me throughout this journey.
Mohammad H. Ahmadi, UW-Whitewater
"Bob Wilson is a master in explaining mathematics, more generally, in explaining how things work. For over 30 years, he has been devoted to teaching and to students. Bob has an incredible knowledge of and facility for technological things. This contributes to his considerable success in the classroom and to his immense popularity as a teacher. His experience in industry has been an important influence in his teaching, and students react very favorably to his real-world knowledge. Bob has worked with graduate students on problems in math education and is the pivotal person in a seminar on math education. He has been very influential in undergraduate education about math and its applications, and in graduate education about educational issues."
American
Mathematics
Competitions
The AMC 8 competition was
held on November 14, 2006. A total of 2107
The AMC 10 and 12 contests were held on February 6 and 21, 2007. A total of 710 Wisconsin students took the AMC 10 (down from 917), and 1462 (down from 1,616) took the AMC 12 for a total of 2,172 overall. This number is down from the 2,533 taking the exams in 2006. Of the Wisconsin students, 90 scored well enough to be invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). This number is down from 269 in 2006 and 205 in 2005. For the first time in several years, there was one perfect score, by Xu Iris, in Wisconsin. The average score for Wisconsin students compared to the national average scores are in the following table:
|
|
10A |
10B |
12A |
12B |
|
Wisconsin |
65.1 |
65.1 |
65.2 |
73.6 |
|
National |
67.9 |
61.5 |
66.8 |
73.1 |
Six Wisconsin students qualified for the United States Mathematical Olympiad: Timothy Black and Iris Xu of James Madison Memorial High School, Daniel Mulder of Maranatha Baptist Academy, Samuel Balinghasay of Marshfield HS, Kyle Stankowski of Mosinee Middle School, and Ye Wang of Nicolet HS.
The next AMC 8 is November 13, 2007 and the AMC 10 and 12 will be given February 12 and February 27, 2008.
MAA-Wisconsin
Section
High School Contest Examination
The Section contest examination was given on Thursday, December 7, 2006. There were 4085 high school students’ scores reported from 85 schools. This year, there were 29 perfect scores reported. The cutoff score for the top 1% was 115 out of 120.
The contest winners in combined state contest and AMC scores were Iris Xu and Timothy Black, both of James Madison Memorial High School.
Many thanks to the
UW-Stout faculty and all those who
participated in writing the 2006 contest.
The UW-Stout faculty invite those interested in helping in the
2007
contest to contact them in September.
The contact person is Dr. Laura Schmidt..
This year the Fall
Meeting of Project NExT-Wisconsin was held from September 28 –
September 30,
2007. Dr. Aparna Higgins, the co-director of National Project NExT,
lead a
workshop entitled “Undergraduate Research-An Introduction to our
Profession.” As usual the workshop was
held at “Olde Towne”
and participants stayed at a local hotel in Menomonie, WI.
This
year 4 new participants have joined the
Project NExT-WI section. The current membership is holding at 25.
There is a list of
fellows on NExT-WI web-page who are willing to give a talk suitable for
the
faculty OR the general undergraduate audience. You may invite us to
come for a
math club, colloquium, or whatever.
Project
NExT-Wisconsin is open to all full-time faculty members in mathematics
departments in the Wisconsin Section who are within their first four
years of
undergraduate teaching in Wisconsin. You may also be eligible if you
have more
teaching experience, but are new to the Wisconsin Section.
There is no membership fee to join Project
NExT-WI. To apply, please contact me at ulhaqi@uwplatt.edu
(application material is also assessable at http://www.uwplatt.edu/nextwi/)
The co-Coordinators, Ken
Price and Steve Szydlik, hope you
will encourage some of your students to attend conferences and possibly
give
talks. The quality and quantity of
presentations continues to be impressive.
The Pi Mu Epsilon Regional Undergraduate Math Conference is
coming up
soon,
The spring 2008 section
meeting will be held at the
The Wisconsin Mathematics
Council’s Annual Green Lake
Conference is scheduled for
The fast-paced math game
show “Face Off!” will return at a
number of conferences this year: for
Middle School students at MATC in October 2007, at the Pi Mu Epsilon
regional
undergraduate conference at
Interview with Professor Rick Poss, by John Koker
1. When do you remember becoming interested in mathematics?
I
can remember “showing off” my counting ability to my future teachers
even
before I started grade school. I have
enjoyed math all of my life.
2. Was there a teacher who encouraged or influenced you?
There
were many! Fr. Martin Dusseau taught me that math was fun.
Fr.
Kevin Ryan taught me that I could handle difficult math. Fr.
Thomas
Ostdick and Dr. Rose Carney taught me that math could be exciting and
challenging. John Homer introduced me to
the MAA.
3. Was there a time in your life when you discovered that mathematics was what you wanted to do for a career?
Even
in high school I felt that I would continue with math.
When I started in college, I expected to be a
high school teacher. By my sophomore
year, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to deal with students of
high-school
age, so I decided that I would teach at the college level.
4. Where were you born?
Aurora,
IL
5. And your undergraduate school and major was? What about graduate school?
I
attended St. Meinrad College for two years, then completed my math
major at St.
Procopius College (now Benedictine University). I received my
doctorate
from the University of Notre Dame.
6. How did you end up at St. Norbert College?
I
was looking for a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, so I
applied to
just about every one of them. It helped that Cindy and I had
friends
living in Green Bay. I started teaching at St. Norbert College in
1970,
right out of graduate school. I’ve
enjoyed the school and it’s feeling of community so much that I’ve
never left!
7. When were you and Cindy married? And how about your children? When did they come along?
We
were married in 1967. We celebrated our 40th anniversary
this past
August. Michelle was born in 1969; Ken was born in 1971. We
have
four grandsons, ages 9, 6, 5, and 3.
8. I know that students have been a big part of your career. Can you please talk about what students have meant to you as a teacher and mathematician?
Students
are the whole reason for teaching! I love the daily interaction
with the
students and the opportunity to share with them my excitement about
mathematics. I found my professional niche by working with
students as
advisor to the math club at St. Norbert College.
9. In general, it would be unfair to ask you to name your favorite student. However, who is your favorite student in the set of all students who received a Ph.D. from UW Milwaukee, taught 1 year at SUNY Potsdam, chaired the UW Oshkosh Mathematics Department for 6 years and is currently the Dean of the College of Letters and Science at UW Oshkosh?
John
Koker is an especially memorable student. It’s hard to pick other
favorites. I’m proud of all of my former students, whether they
went on
to graduate school, went into high school teaching, went into some sort
of
business field, or chose any other career path.
10. As for your own professional career, what areas of mathematics did you study?
My
dissertation is in formal logic. My current area of interest is
helping
undergraduates do research – in any area in which we might find an
interesting
problem.
11. What courses do you like to teach?
All
of them! I’ve taught almost every mathematics course that St.
Norbert
College offers, from Basic Algebra, through Calculus, up to Complex
Analysis. (I’ve taught 21 different courses, not including
independent
studies.) My current favorites are Set Theory and Calculus II.
12. For years students and mathematicians have traveled to St. Norbert for a Pi Mu Epsilon meeting. It has become a Wisconsin mathematics tradition. What has the success of this meeting meant to you.
Hosting
this conference was not my idea. I had taken a bunch of students
to a
different regional conference, and on the way home, they said, “We
could do
this.” So, we did! The reasons for whatever success the
conference
might enjoy are the faculty who give up their time to help students
prepare
presentations and then bring them to the conference and the students
who come
to share what they have learned. Without these students, there
would be
no conference. The satisfaction that I
get from the conference is in seeing the excitement of students as they
make
new friends and share their love of mathematics.
13. Talk a little about your experience as president of Pi Mu Epsilon?
I
was apprehensive and a bit terrified by the idea of being in charge of
such an
important and venerable organization. Some special memories are:
realizing that I was the one who had to ask the NSA to continue its
support for
student speakers to the national conference; dealing with the change in
the
summer national meetings when the AMS decided to no longer participate;
reaching out to Kappa Mu Epsilon, the other national honorary
mathematics
society; representing PME at the ceremonies honoring the USA IMO
participants;
and being the PME representative at the funeral of J. Sutherland Frame,
who was
the person most responsible (in my opinion) for the success of the
organization. As President, I was gratified to discover the
respect that
other mathematical organizations have for PME.
14. What do you think is the best part of mathematics and being a mathematician? How about the worst part?
The
best part of being a mathematician is having the ability to see the
world in a
way not open to non-mathematicians. I also like to see the fear
in the
eyes of people when I tell them that I’m a mathematician. (Just
kidding!) The worst part is having so many people tell me that
they were
never any good at math, or that they always hated math. I hope
that we
can find some way to make the learning of mathematics less intimidating.
15. How would you describe what you do to someone outside your field?
I
teach! I try to get students who enjoy math and do well in it to
consider
continuing with it. I try to help those who fear math or struggle
with it
to feel a bit better about it. In general, I try to get all
students to
increase their knowledge of and appreciation for mathematics. The more
mathematics that our students know, the better prepared they will be
for the
increasingly complicated and technical world in which they live and
will work.
The mathematics program at Carroll College is excited to welcome two faculty members this year.
Dr. Christopher Kuster joins us as an Assistant Professor in the area of applied mathematics. Chris earned his PhD in August 2006 from North Carolina State University.
Darryl Johnson is a Visiting Instructor this year, coordinating the Introductory Statistics course.
Carthage College welcomes two new colleagues to the Mathematics Department. Dr. Dominic Klyve finished his Ph.D. at Dartmouth College in 2007. He is co-founder and director of the Euler Archive, and online repository of the works of Leonhard Euler. Dr. Erik Tou also received his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College in 2007. Erik is the Chief Historian for the Euler Archive. Please join us in welcoming Dominic and Erik to the Wisconsin Section.
Scott Corry has joined the mathematics department at Lawrence University. Scott has just finished his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, having received his BA from Reed College. His research areas are number theory and algebraic geometry.
Math Club Events:
Further information is available at http://matcmadison.edu/studentlife/clubs/mathclub
We welcome Younis Zaidan as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Younis completed his PhD in Differential Equations at UWM this past summer.
John Frohliger is on sabbatical this semester. He is preparing a new course which will become part of the College’s General Education Program. John has served as the Associate Dean of the Natural Sciences for the past five years. We are looking forward to having him back in the math discipline teaching full time.
Bonnie Berken and Rick Poss begin phased retirement this year. Both are teaching only in the fall semester and intend to visit warmer climates during the winter term.
Bonnie
Berken and Katherine
Muhs are working with 30
Terry Jo Leiterman is offering a new course for math and physics majors this fall called “Math Modeling”, which will investigate population dynamics and mechanical vibrations. The class is building a square wheel bicycle which plans to debut at the Pi Mu Epsilon Conference on November 2nd and 3rd here at SNC.
Larry Thorsen continues as the Director of the SNC Honors Program. He has been serving the College in this role for 21 years.
Bonnie Berken is offering a Writing Intensive College Algebra and Finite Math course this semester as part of the College’s Writing Across the Curriculum Program.
SNC will host the
Twenty-Second
Annual Pi Mu Epsilon Regional Undergraduate Math Conference on November
2nd
and 3rd. The invited speaker
is Keith Devlin from
With Leslie Smith as our present chair, the department continues to develop in many ways.
This year we mourned the death of John Harvey, For many years before his retirement, John was jointly in the math department and in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. He had been very active in the Wisconsin Section and the Wisconsin Math Council as well as curricular reform for K-12 across the country.
Recent retirees include Pat Ahern, Georgia Benkart, Arnold Johnson, Jim Kuelbs, and Peter Orlik, while new tenured, tenure track and post-doc faculty this year are Hsian-Hua Tseng, Jean-Luc Thiffeault, Fedja Nazarov, Mustafa Kalafat, Amanda Folsom, and David Anderson.
Late in 2006 retired Prof. Walter Rudin received an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna. This is the first honorary doctorate in mathematics they have given since Carl Ludwig Siegel received one in 1956. The 11th annual Wolfgang Wasow Memorial Lecture was given by Elias Stein, and the 11th lecture in the series on Linear Algebra and Applications by Ronald DeVore. Andrew Majda and Helmut Hofer were this year's Distinguished Lecturers.
Professors Xianghong Gong, Shi Jin, Bob Wilson, and Tonghai Yang had research sabbatical leaves for part or all of the last academic year. This year Professor Marty Isaacs, Ken Ono, and Paul Terwilliger have sabbaticals.
The department has been working closely with the Madison Metropolitan School District and other districts in the region in programs for elementary and middle school teachers. We have just completed a program called "Math Masters" that had UW faculty and MMSD resource teachers working with middle school teachers for classes on algebra, geometry, probability, measurement, and proportional reasoning: A key part of this program was that the courses were to be taught using text materials and teaching methods that the middle school teachers will themselves be using in their classrooms. A new program, started late in the summer, Extending Mathematical Knowledge, is for teachers in grades 3-5. A UW faculty member (Bob Wilson from this department) taught an intensive class in the summer along with MMSD math resource teacher Carrie Valentine, and they will continue working with the elementary teachers in sessions during this school year. A committee pulling together the math department, the school of education, and MMSD, has created a new program for students preparing to be middle school teachers: Wisconsin certification at present makes no distinction between preparing to teach 1st grade and 8th. This specialized mathematics minor will include the existing (but evolving) courses for preservice elementary teachers and add courses specific to middle school algebra and precalculus, with calculus content, and a capstone course to pull it all together.
Our summer REU program continues to thrive. Last summer's number theory group, led by Ken Ono and Amanda Folsom with graduate students Jeremy Rouse and Frank Thorne, had ten students, two still in high school! The last couple of years programs have included four Putnam winners, last year's winner of the Morgan Prize (Daniel Kane), last year's first runner up and this year's winner of the Alice T. Schafer prize (Yaim Cooper and Alison Miller), and several winners in the International Mathematical Olympiad. Undergraduate research also is fostered in our CURL (Collaborative Undergraduate Research Lab) program funded by NSF as part of our VIGRE grant.
Assistant
Professor Lijing Sun
joined the department in Fall 2007. She received her PhD in Mathematics
from
Wayne State University in August 2007. Her current research interests
are in
the interactions between Harmonic Analysis, Geometric Analysis, and
Partial
Differential Equations. Specifically she focuses on the study of
sub-elliptic
operators.
Assistant
Professor Chao Zhu
also joined the Department right after he received his Ph.D. in
mathematics
from Wayne State University in August 2007. His current area of
research is in
regime-switching diffusions and their applications.
He and Lijing are married and live in
an apartment close to Lake Michigan.
Yi Ming Zou has been promoted to
Full Professor, and Istvan Lauko to Associate
Professor
with tenure.
Professor
Albert Milani has
received a Fulbright Foundation research and teaching grant for the
research
project, “Long time behavior of solutions to quasilinear evolutions”.
The
Northwest Mutual Foundation has given the department’s Actuarial
Sciences
Program a gift of $750,000, along with an additional $250,000 to UWM
for
scholarships for underrepresented students across the University. The grant to the Program will support hiring
of faculty and teaching staff, broadening course offerings, and
attracting
strong students.
Robert Moore, Associate Professor
Emeritus, has made a
gift to the College of Letters and Science to support a peace-building
network
across diverse fields, to be housed within the College’s Institute of
World
Affairs. According to the College, the
goal of the gift is to institutionalize a process that addresses common
goals
and concerns about the future of society and the world.
Those interested in making donations may
contact Lisa Pieper, Development Office, at 414-229-3294 or lrpieper@uwm.edu.
More information is at http://www.uwm.edu/letsci/collegium/collegium_2007.pdf
Associate
Professor Gabriella
Pinter has won a UWM Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award for
2007. She is the fourth member of the
department to be so recognized. The
Award is being presented at the Annual Fall Awards Ceremony on October
2.
Professor
Jon Kahl of the
Atmospheric Sciences group was awarded a "Teaching Excellence" award
by the UWM Alumni Association (http://www4.uwm.edu/alumni_friends/alumni_association/get_connected/scholarships.cfm). The check was presented to him at the UWM
Alumni Association's holiday reception last December, and a plaque was
presented to him at the Alumni Association's Annual Awards Program and
Reception on May 19 2007.
UWM’s
Student Accessibility Center has given two of five Above and
Beyond Awards to department members Michael
Hero and Chris Sears. Mike
received his Ph.D. from the department in 1990 and has been a
lecturer
since 1995. Chris received his Ph.D.
this year. Further information may be
found at http://www.uwm.edu/News/report/07.06/R_Jun07.pdf
Kelly Kaiser Kohlmetz, Coordinator
for Math 095, is co-author of
the first edition of Intermediate Algebra,
published in January by McGraw-Hill.
A
number of students finish their PhDs and Master's. They're listed
on http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Math/Alumni/alumPhD.html
and http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Math/Alumni/alumMS.html.
We welcomed three new faculty members this Fall. Ahyoung Kim received her Ph.D. in mathematics from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. Her dissertation was in functional analysis and harmonic analysis under the direction of Alexander Kiselev. Ahyoung also has B.S. degrees in mathematics and food & bioengineering from Yonsei University in South Korea. Pamela Peters received her Ph.D. in mathematics at Colorado State University in 2007 in the area of algebraic topology. Pam also has M.S. degrees in mathematics from Colorado State University and in systems management from University of Southern California, as well as a B.A. in mathematics from Arizona State University. Zia Uddin received his Ph.D. in mathematics from University of Florida in 2004 and is currently an assistant professor at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania. Zia also has a M.S. degree in mathematics from University of Florida and a B.S. degree in mathematics from University of Idaho.
Mu-ling Chang has been awarded tenure.
Alexander Basyrov joined the department as a new tenure track faculty member. He received his PhD from Indiana University under Sergey Pinchuk in Several Complex Variables. Tim Zick, from Iowa State and Charles Serros from UW-Stout and UW-Eau Claire joined the department for yearlong academic staff positions. Christie Ferrara and Heather Stevens have joined the department as adjuncts for the fall semester. Chris Bendel has resumed chairing the department after returning from a spring sabbatical at the University of Virginia. Chris coorganized a workshop at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) in Palo Alto entitled Cohomology and Representation Theory for Finite Lie Groups in June. Jeanne Foley was awarded the University’s Merle Price Faculty Award for Excellence. The University makes only one such award per year and is based on (1) a strong record of teaching and learning innovation, and/or (2) research contributing to the mission of the university including research involving students. Mingshen Wu is currently on sabbatical during the fall semester. Nelu Ghenciu attended and presented at the First Joint International Meeting between the AMS and the Polish Mathematical Society, July 31 – August 3, 2007, Warsaw, Poland, University of Warsaw. Laura Schmidt was one of the keynote speakers for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference held at Stout in May entitled Teaching, Learning and Technology: What does SoTL Reveal?
The Department hired
two new
tenure track faculty; Tamas Szabo
who joined us from the
Congratulations are
in order for Ki-Bong Nam who won the university
research award, Fe Evangelista who
won the college advising award, and the MCS program which has won (for
the
eighth time) an award as the top rated four-year college program in
North
America from the Association of Information Technology Professionals.
Jonathan
Kane assisted in the grading of the 2007 USA Mathematical
Olympiad, attended the Communicating Mathematics Conference in
Mohammad
Ahmadi and Thomas Drucker attended the MAA MathFest
in
[1] Ki-Bong Nam, Generalized S-type Lie
Algebras,
Vol. 37, No. 4, Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics, 2007,
1291-1300.
[2] Seul Hee Choi, Jeong-Sig Lee, and Ki-Bong
Nam,
"W-type and H-type Non-Associative Algebras using Additive Maps I",
International Journal of Algebra, Vol. 1, 2007, no. 5-8, 335-346.
[3] Lee, Jeong-Sig, Wang, Moon-Ok and Nam,
Ki-Bong,
" Notes on a stable algebra," I. J. Appl. Algebra Discrete Struct. 5
(2007), no. 1,
[4] Ki-Bong Nam, Completely Non-Symmetric
Algebras,
Algebras Groups and Geometries, Vol. 23 (2006), no. 4 (Dec.), Hadronic
Press.
[5] Seul Hee Choi and Ki-Bong Nam, "Weyl
type non-associative algebra using additive groups I," Algebra
Colloquium,
Volume 14 (2007), 479-488, Number 3, 2007.
[6] Ki-Bong Nam and Seul Hee Choi, "On the
Derivations of Non-Associative Weyl-type Algebras," Southeast Asian
Bull.
Math., (2007) 31: 341-348.