- Governor's Corner
August 18, 2011
Florida Section
Mathematical Association of America
Top Five Updates from BOG and MathFest:
- First and foremost, the nomination of David Kerr of Eckerd College to receive the 2012 Meritorious Service Award was approved. I will joke that it was a close vote, but you probably know most of what I say is not true. This award will be presented in January at the JMM in Boston. My congratulations once again to David, and my thanks to Chuck Lindsay, Monika Kiss, and Janet Samuels for their service on nominating committee for this award. This award can be bestowed only once every five years, so David is in “rare air” with this one.
- While the state tax issue will still prohibit the sections from selling books at the meetings, we have the latitude to use our holdings whatever way we prefer, and can have raffles or door prizes as we did last year. Some sections are trying various approaches, like giving away a book on hand for every $20 in book orders or the like. The good news is we can direct how we want to handle this.
- There is concern about the quantity of nominations and the quality of the applications (not the quality of the nominees) for national teaching awards. I would like to see us develop a process that works for the FL Section both in the short and long terms, as I know there have been years when we did not submit a nomination. We have outstanding faculty in this state, and it is incumbent on us to see they are recognized at every opportunity.
- MAA website will be changing, especially on how sections are linked to national site, and policies that are needed by section officers and those needed by members are easily accessible. The beginning work looked very promising, but there is still considerable detail work that will take place this fall.
- MAA is starting to get ready to celebrate its Centennial in 2015 and certainly they want sections to help out. I’ll just mention that now to whet your appetite and will fill in the “how?” part later.
Mike