Louisiana/Mississippi Section of the Mathematical Association of America NEWSLETTER—FALL 2008 Volume 31 No. 1 Contents LETTER FROM TOMMY LEAVELLE—LA/MS SECTION CHAIR Letter from Tommy Leavelle....................... 1 Letter from the Section Dear Section Members: Governor .................... 2 As this year's chair of the Louisiana-Mississippi Section of the Section NExT ............. 3 MAA and on behalf of the Mathematics Department at Mississippi College, I would like to invite every member of the section to Outstanding Teaching Award Announcement come to the section meeting March 5-7, 2009. ..................................... 3 As in previous years, we will begin with the integration bee for News from around the students on Thursday night. On Friday morning we will have Section......................... 4 activities for section NExT fellows and their mentors as well as the Project NExT student team competition. We are currently planning to have the Announcement ........... 9 president of Pi Mu Epsilon as the speaker for the student luncheon. In addition we have invited David Bressoud, the incoming president of the MAA, to be our plenary session speaker. His scheduled topic is "Calculus as a high school course" and we will follow with a panel discussion involving calculus teachers at all levels. There will also be general sessions, student presentations and a banquet. If you have a topic that you would like to see at the meeting, please email me at [email protected] with your suggestions. We hope to make this our best section meeting ever. More details about preregistration and hotels will be on the section web site as they become available. We look forward to seeing you in March. Tommy Leavelle 2 LETTER FROM THE SECTION members most certainly will be affected by their recommendations in several ways and include a GOVERNOR suggestion that the dues structure be simplified and based solely on income level. This would eliminate student memberships as an explicit Colleagues, choice although they could still join at the lowest income level. Another suggestion is to eliminate This report marks the halfway point in my term as individual undergraduate memberships altogether your governor and I have enjoyed serving as your and have student membership handled through representative thus far to the national organization. each mathematics department using bulk I continue to be amazed by the number of subscriptions of Math Horizons. Under this plan, programs and services offered by the MAA and yet advisors would submit a list of email addresses of how little I knew about these until serving on the those students receiving the magazine and that Board of Governors. would be it. The idea of creating MAA Fellows is being thrown about as a way to encourage A special congratulations is in order to Judith professional involvement within the association. If Covington who was selected to serve as the you have any comments on any of these issues, Governor-at-large for Teacher Education by the please let me know so I can pass them along at our Board of Governors at its Mathfest meeting. She next meeting. starts her term following the Joint Meetings this January and will allow our section two A new focus dealing with the association’s representatives for the next three years. We are journals, periodicals and online publications is proud of her fine work with NExT and look being studied by the Working Group on forward to her continued involvement through this Periodicals and Communications. I serve as a new position. member of this group and we held our first meeting in Madison. One of the topics we are Speaking of the national meetings, I was happy to considering revolves around the use of online vs again host an informal section dinner at Mathfest print media. All of the MAA journals that you with about eight of us getting together for subscribe to are available in electronic form and something mediterranean at Parthenon-Gyros in can be accessed online via the MAA web site. Madison. Plans are to again meet somewhere for However, very few members make use of this dinner at the Joint Meeting in Washington. I’ll feature. This group also will consider requests send out a note sometime in December with time being made for new MAA journals and whether and location information. If you have any the journal selected with membership can be from suggestions in either regard, please send me an a wider list of choices or from no choice at all. email at [email protected] and I’ll look into it. With the advent of Harvard’s new policy requiring its faculty to allow the university to make their Many of the items being discussed by the Board of scholarly articles available free online, the MAA Governors focus around the work of several must consider how its publications remain strategic planning working groups. At the last competitive in the midst of this opensource Joint Meeting, the Working Group on Governance movement. If you have any ideas to share presented a report which presented numerous regarding these issues, please let me know as soon recommendations being considered including as possible since we are currently discussing many many which involve national by-law changes. of these between meetings. Many of these changes revolve around committee restructuring. We continued to consider parts of Breakout sessions were held at the Board of their report at the recent Mathfest meeting. I’m Governor’s meeting to discuss the work of the not certain how this will affect the rank-and-file Working Group on STEM issues (science, members but it should at least make it easier to technology, engineering and mathematics). The navigate the committee list on the web site. working group collected opinions regarding Connie Campbell has served as an integral part of “communication, articulation, teacher preparation this committee and support, and measurement and assessment”. The work of this group will apply to many of us as Another strategic focus is being studied by the we offer service courses within these areas. Please Working Group on Membership. Individual share any of your opinions/suggestions within 3 these areas and I’ll gladly pass them along to this Among the topics featured in the program are: committee. • information on current trends and innovations in undergraduate education. Within our section, I am delighted that the • how to establish collaboration and committee selected R. D. Anderson to receive the interaction between people from the section’s Meritorious Service Award. As most of many different kinds of institutions in us know, he was a valuable member of both the our section, including private colleges, national MAA as well as our section. He will be state universities, liberal arts colleges missed. The executive committee is looking into and community colleges. long term ways we can honor Dick’s service to the association. • activities to encourage the participation of new faculty and their students in the I hope to see you at the Joint Meeting starting programs of the LA/MS Section of the January 4, 2009 in Washington, DC. Please let me MAA. know if you are planning to attend so I can look you up there. Also, the section meeting will be In addition, the Section NExT Program matches held on the Mississippi College campus March 5- participants with mentors from similar 7, 2009. I am delighted to have the meeting at my institutions. home institution and am looking forward to all of the program features being planned by section The online application (see chair Tommy Leavelle. http://sandbox.mc.edu/~travis/maa/application.ht ml) consists of a short personal statement and a I continue to be amazed by the resourcefulness and letter of support from the department chair. talent of the member of our section and am once Section NExT fellows will be required to attend again grateful to serve you. Please let me know the spring section meeting for each of the next how I can be helpful. two years. National NExT fellows are encouraged to participate in the Section NExT John Travis activities, as well! LA/MS Section Governor Questions? Contact Jenna Carpenter _______________________________ ([email protected]), Coordinator of the Section NExT Committee, or check out the SECTION NExT Section website at: http://maa.mc.edu/next/ Deadline for receipt of applications for the 2007- Are you a new faculty member within the first 2008 Section NExT Fellow selection is three years of beginning full-time employment December 15, 2008. with teaching responsibilities at the college or university level? Do you have any new faculty _________________________ members in your department? New faculty need to be Louisiana-Mississippi MAA Section Next Fellows! Designed for new college and Outstanding Teaching Award university faculty holding a masters or doctorate in the mathematical sciences, Section NExT The Outstanding Teacher Award Committee (New Experiences in Teaching) is a two year seeks nominations for 2009. A completed professional development program that application must accompany each nomination. A addresses the full range of faculty complete application consists of a nomination responsibilities including teaching, scholarly form, a narrative describing the nominee's activities, and service. Each year at our Spring extraordinary teaching success (limit 5 pages), Section Meeting, Section NExT sponsors a evidence of the nominee's extraordinary program for fellows in which the needs and teaching success (limit 3 pages), and up to five concerns of new faculty can be openly discussed one page letters of recommendation two of with a regional network of mathematicians. which must come from the nominee's present or 4 former students. For more details see looking forward to hosting the next tournament http://maa.mc.edu/meeting/distinguished.html.