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April/May 2009 | Volume 29 Number 3 MAA FOCUS the Newsmagazine MAA FOCUS The Newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America April/May 2009 | Volume 29 Number 3 WHAT’S INSIDE 9 ............Technology in Support of the Classroom 10 ............How to Excel at Math Transformation 19 ............Las Chicas’ View of Las Chicas de Matematicas 21 ............MathFest Portland, OR August 6–8, 2009 FOCUS_09_April_MayFINAL.indd 1 3/12/09 10:19:51 AM MAA FOCUS is published by the Mathematical Association of America in January, February/March, MAA FOCUS April/May, August/September, October/ November, and December/January. Editor: Fernando Gouvêa, Colby College Volume 29 | Issue 3 [email protected] Managing Editor: Carol Baxter, MAA [email protected] 3 Sylvia Bozeman Receives AAAS Mentor Award Senior Writer: Harry Waldman, MAA 3 Maria Gordina Wins 2009 Michler Prize [email protected] 4 Math Teachers’ Circles Connect Mathematicians with Please address advertising inquiries to: Middle School Teachers [email protected] Brian Conrey, Brianna Donaldson, and Tatiana Shubin David Bressoud President: 6 The Math Circle Summer Institute at Notre Dame First Vice President: Elizabeth Mayfield Bob and Ellen Kaplan Second Vice President: Daniel J. Teague 8 Teaching Time Savers: Secretary: Martha J. Siegel Student-Written Executive Summaries Associate Secretary: Gerard Venema Susan Martonosi Treasurer: John W. Kenelly 9 Technology in Support of the Classroom David M. Bressoud Executive Director: Tina H. Straley 10 How to Excel at Math Transformation Director of Publications for Journals and Communications: Ivars Peterson John Loase MAA FOCUS Editorial Board: Donald 12 Knowing What it Means to “Know Your Audience” J. Albers; Robert Bradley; Joseph Gallian; Aaron Luttman and Rachel Schwell Jacqueline Giles; Colm Mulcahy; Michael Orrison; Peter Renz; Sharon Cutler Ross; 14 MAA National Elections Coming Up in April and May 2009 Annie Selden; Hortensia Soto-Johnson; 16 What We Learned… Peter Stanek; Ravi Vakil. By Organizing and Hosting an MAA Sectional Meeting Letters to the editor should be addressed George Ashline, Karl-Dieter Crisman, Joanna Ellis-Monaghan, to Fernando Gouvêa, Colby College, Dept. of Mathematics, Waterville, ME 04901, or Zsuzsanna Kadas, Greta Pangborn, and Lloyd Simons by email to [email protected]. 19 Las Chicas’ View of Las Chicas de Matematicas Subscription and membership questions Cathleen Craviotto & Hortensia Soto-Johnson should be directed to the MAA Customer Service Center, 800-331-1622; email: [email protected]; (301) 617-7800 (outside U.S. and Canada); fax: (301) 21 MathFest 206-9789. MAA Headquarters: (202) 387-5200. Portland, OR Copyright © 2009 by the Mathematical Association of America (Incorporated). Educational institutions may reproduce August 6 – 8, 2009 articles for their own use, but not for sale, provided that the following citation 38 Employment Opportunities is used: “Reprinted with permission of MAA FOCUS, the newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America (Incorporated).” Periodicals postage paid at Washing- ton, DC and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to MAA Cover photo of Portland courtesy of FOCUS, Mathematical Association of iStockphoto.com. America, P.O. Box 90973, Washington, DC 20090-0973. ISSN: 0731-2040; Printed in the United States of America. April/May 2009 | MAA FOCUS | 3 Sylvia Bozeman Receives AAAS Mentor Award t its annual meeting, the American Association for American to be elected Athe Advancement of Science honored Sylvia Boze- Governor of a Section. man of Spelman College. Bozeman received the 2008 She has had an active role AAAS Mentor Award “for her commitment toward in many MAA projects, increasing the number of African American women with including, for example, doctoral degrees in mathematics.” the MAA Guidelines for Programs and Depart- Bozeman, who earned her PhD at Emory University ments in the Undergradu- and has been at Spelman College since 1974, is named ate Mathematical Sci- by many students as their inspiration and mentor. Since ences. Her biography can Bozeman became chair of the mathematics department be found online at the at Spelman, some twenty students have completed their SUMMA archive, http:// PhDs there. At least half of them have said that they owe www.maa.org/summa/ their success to Bozeman’s mentoring and encourage- archive/s_bozema.htm, ment as they worked on their doctorates. She is also one and at the Mathemati- of the creators of the EDGE (Encouraging Diversity in cians of the African Di- Graduate Education) program, which was launched in aspora web site at http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/ 1998 by Spelman and Bryn Mawr with the goal of en- bozeman_sylviat.html. couraging and enabling women to complete their gradu- ate education in mathematics. (See our December 2008 The AAAS Mentor Award was established in 1996. It recog- issue, page 14). nizes “individuals who have... mentored significant numbers of under-represented students towards a PhD in the scienc- Bozeman has received many honors, including a Distin- es.” The award includes a monetary prize and a commemo- guished Teaching Award from the Southeastern Section rative plaque. It is presented every year at the AAAS Annual of the MAA. In 1997, she became the first African- Meeting. Maria Gordina Wins 2009 Michler Prize he Association for Women in Mathematics has infinite dimensions with Tannounced that the winner of the third annual applications in quantum Ruth I. Michler Memorial Prize is Maria Gordina of field theory and hydrody- the University of Connecticut. The prize includes a namics.” residential fellowship in the Cornell University math- The Michler Prize was ematics department without any teaching obligations. established by Gerhard Gordina was educated at Leningrad State University and Waltraud Michler and at Cornell. After spending some time at McMas- of Essen, Germany, in ter University and at the University of California in memory of their daugh- San Diego, she went to the University of Connecticut, ter Ruth, who was killed where she is now Associate Professor. Her interests in- on November 1, 2000 at volve heat kernel measures and their properties, in the the age of 33 in a tragic accident. Because Ruth Michler was context of infinite-dimensional non-linear spaces. At deeply committed to its mission of supporting women math- Cornell, Gordina “plans to collaborate with Leonard ematicians, they chose AWM to administer the prize, which Gross (Cornell), Laurent Saloff-Coste (Cornell) and S. provides mid-career women mathematicians an opportunity to Rajeev (Rochester) on problems connecting infinite- spend a year at Cornell, chosen as the host institution because dimensional Lie groups, Lie algebras and Laplacians in of its distinctive research atmosphere and because Ithaca was Ruth’s birthplace. 4 | MAA FOCUS | April/May 2009 Math Teachers’ Circles Connect Mathematicians with Middle School Teachers Brian Conrey, Brianna Donaldson, and Tatiana Shubin ath circles for students are by now a well-es- Mtablished phenomenon. Many MAA FOCUS readers have participated in them as leaders. Oth- ers of us have encountered former math circle stu- dents or are former math circle students ourselves. And all of us who have become acquainted with this lively, interactive forum for dialogue between young students and mathematicians can attest to its benefits. A math teacher and assistant principal at Miller Middle School in Cupertino, California, Mary Fay- Zenk, went even further. She used to attend math circles with her students. She loved the math, but hated being relegated to the sidelines. “They have The participants of the first Math Teachers’ Circle at AIM, Summer 2006. a rule that adults are not allowed to participate,” their vision. AIM Executive Director Brian Conrey and she explained. “This was very frustrating because it was so Director of Programming David Farmer were enthusi- interesting! I decided that we needed something like this for astic about the idea of a math circle for teachers, having teachers.” worked with Shubin and her colleagues since 1998 To pursue her idea of a math circle for teachers, Fay-Zenk when they all helped found the still-active San Jose teamed up with local mathematicians Tatiana Shubin, Tom Math Circle for students. In the summer of 2006 AIM Davis, Joshua Zucker, and Sam Vandervelde, all of whom had hosted a five-day residential immersion program for been involved in organizing math circles for students. The local middle school math teachers. The organizers knew group put together a plan and came to the American Institute they were on to something when they observed teach- of Mathematics (AIM), based in Palo Alto, California, with ers becoming so engrossed that they kept doing math into the late hours of each evening. This immer- sion program was the beginning of the first Math Teachers’ Circle (MTC). The success of the original MTC prompted AIM to expand the Math Teachers’ Circle Program across the country. The national Math Teachers’ Circle Program has two primary goals. The first is to engage middle school math teachers in math- ematical problem solving and to involve them in an ongoing dialogue about math with students, colleagues, and professional mathematicians. In addition, the program also seeks to provide guid- ance, materials, and resources to middle school math teachers that will enable them to promote open-ended problem solving as a way of learning, thinking about, and practicing mathematics in Brian Conrey, surrounded by MTC participants. their classrooms. April/May 2009 | MAA FOCUS | 5 The life cycle of each local MTC starts with a residential five-day summer workshop, during which teachers are immersed in doing problem solving. This phase of a MTC serves to foster a culture of problem solving and establish a cohesive network among the teachers and the mathematician facilitators. During the subsequent school year, teachers who attended the residential im- mersion workshop continue to attend monthly meet- ings of the circle. A typical three-hour evening meeting includes an interactive math session followed by an informal period when participants discuss their class- room practices and concerns.
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