Congratulations to Leonard Lipkin from University of North Florida on receiving the Distinguished Teaching Award and to Ken Pothoven from the University of South Florida on receiving the Distinguished Service Award.

Please congratulate our newly elected officers:

Stephanie Fitchett, Honors College, Florida Atlantic University, President-Elect
 
Li Zhou, Polk Community College, Vice-President-Elect for Programs
 
Guesna Dohrman, Tallahassee Community College, Vice-President-Elect for Site Selection
 
Daniel Jelsovsky, Florida Southern College, Coordinator of Student Activities

We had 180 paid registrations this year, with 108 people pre-registering.  Twelve people won $50 cash prizes in a drawing from the preregistrants.

Thanks go to Ben Fusaro for stepping in to develop a student program after the untimely death of Shrinivas Dalal.  Lubo Markov, Vice President for Programs, put together a varied program.  Lee Armstrong, local arrangements chair, and his committee including Lori Dunlop-Pyle, Patrick Higgins, Heath Martin and Ram Mohapatra, did a great job of scheduling our rooms and arranging food events.  Joe Skala organized the registration procedure and MAA book sales with help from John Waters and David Kerr and some of his students.

Thanks to all of the people who presented talks at our regional conference or at one of the local conferences.  Plans are already well underway for an exciting meeting next year, February 25^th and 26^th, 2005, at Manatee Community College’s Lakewood Ranch Campus.  Mark your calendar and make plans now.  Information will be available in the October newsletter.  If you want to plan far ahead, the following dates are scheduled for future meetings:  February 17-18, 2006, Honors College at Florida Atlantic University; February 16-17, 2007, Tallahassee Community College; February 15-16, 2008, Florida Southern College.

Encourage your fellow faculty to become active in the Florida Section of the MAA and of FTYCMA by attending our local conferences as well as the regional conference, submitting proposals for presentations, and possibly becoming an officer of one of the groups.

2004 Distinguished
Teaching Award

Florida Section
Mathematical Association of America

 
For the gratitude you have earned from a multitude of students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels;

For your clear and understandable way of presenting material so that regardless the topic, whether elementary mathematics, calculus, statistics or graduate-level differential equations, your students were always challenged by the rigor, depth and beauty of the mathematics yet to come;

For your successful work developing new courses in support of mathematics literacy, calculus reform, math for teachers and financial mathematics;

But, perhaps most of all, for your remarkable ability to draw out the highest levels of accomplishment and performance in your students,

The 2004 recipient
of
The Mathematical Association of America Award
for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics
for the State of Florida
is

Leonard Lipkin

University of North Florida

2004 Distinguished
Service Award

Florida Section
Mathematical Association of America

 
For the initiative and professionalism you displayed in serving as the section’s Secretary/Treasurer from 2000 - 2003 and as the section’s Vice-president for Site Selection from 1997 - 1999;

For your successful work at the University of South Florida’s Center for Mathematical Services in coordinating, developing and conducting mathematical enrichment programs for local-area secondary school students;

But, most importantly, for your exemplary performance, spanning a period of three decades, in service to your faculty colleagues throughout the state,

The 2004 recipient
of
The Mathematical Association of America Award
for Distinguished Service to Mathematics
for the State of Florida
is

Ken Pothoven

University of South Florida

Executive Committee Meeting

Florida Section
Mathematical Association of America
University of Central Florida
February 21, 2003

The minutes from the Executive Committee Meeting of April 26, 2003 were approved.

Reports:

1. Pam Crawford, reporting on behalf of our Governor, Marilyn Repsher who could not attend the meeting, read a statement from Marilyn which will be posted on the FL-MAA website in the May 2004 newsletter.  Two items of particular note were:

1. The MAA’s work with AMATYC in the development of a new faculty development program entitled - Project Access.  This program is available to faculty at two-year institutions and is similar to Project NeXT.  Information about the program is available on the MAA website at http://www.maa.org or on the AMATYC website at http://www.amatyc.org.
    
2. The upcoming centennial anniversary of the MAA.  The national office is preparing a display for this event and has asked sections to send material appropriate for the centennial celebration to Washington.

2. Joe Skala gave the Secretary/Treasurer’s Report which indicated that the section has approximately $8,000 on balance.  Joe reported that the publishing companies had donated $1,325 this year to the section so that they could set up tables at the annual meeting.  Joe also reported that there were 120 “preregisters” for the meeting - over twice the number from the 2003 meeting.  Joe reported that the “$50 lottery prizes” were largely responsible for this high number of pre registrations and he recommended that we continue this raffle in the future.
    
3. Bill Rush gave the Newsletter Editor’s Report which indicated that we continue to set new log-in records with our FL-MAA website.  February 2, 2004 marked the most hits on a single day - 230.  February 2004 set a new monthly record with 796 hits and, to date, there have been over 13,000 hits on the website.  Bill reported that there are 568 people on our FL-MAA listserv and he reiterated that May 10th is the deadline for the May 2004 newsletter.
    
4. Scott Hochwald, President-elect, reported that the Central Region met on January 16th with 80 in attendance and that the Suncoast Region met on December 5 with 104 in attendance.  Scott reported that the First Coast Region is planning to meet in April 2004.
    
5. Ben Fusaro gave the Coordinator of Student Activities Report in which he said that MAA national has grant money to host student mathematics conferences.  Embry-Riddle applied for one of these grants this year and will be hosting a meeting in March.  Ben proposed that the section subsidize undergraduate student attendance at the annual conference banquet and the Executive Committee endorsed this idea and approved a cost structure for the banquet regarding students of:

For undergraduate student presenters:  Free

For any undergraduate student:  $5.00

6. Steph Fitchett gave the Vice-president for Site Selection Report wherein she confirmed our next annual meeting at Manatee Community College on February 25-26, 2005 and the 2006 meeting will be hosted by FAU Honors College in Jupiter on February 17-18 2006.
    
7. Lubo Markov gave the Vice-president for Programs Report thanking everyone who was involved in the development of the program with special thanks to the speakers who volunteered to give presentations at the meeting.
    
8. Lee Armstrong gave the Local Arrangements Committee Report indicating that “all was ready” for the annual meeting.  Lee expressed his gratitude to UCF faculty and staff Lori Dunlop-Pyle, Patrick Higgins, Heath Martin, Ram Mohapatra for their work in coordinating this meeting.  The Executive Committee extended its gratitude as well to Lee, Lori, Patrick, Heath, and Ram for all their hard work in support of the MAA.
    
9. David Kerr gave the Nominating Committee’s Report which consisted of a slate of officers of:

Steph Fitchett, FAU Honors College - President-elect

Li Zhou, Polk Community College - Vice-president-elect for Programs

Guesna Dohrman, Tallahassee Community College - Vice-president-elect for Site Selection

Daniel Jelsovsky, Florida Southern College - Coordinator of Student Activities

10. Debbie Garrison reported that FTYCMA will be hosting the national AMATYC meeting in November 2004 in Orlando.  Information on the meeting is available on the FL-MAA website, the FTYCMA website, or the AMATYC website.  Debbie also reported that FTYCMA is working on developing a state-wide curriculum for pre-college algebra courses.

Action Items:

1. The Executive Committee assigned David Kerr to act as a liaison between the national office and the section archives to determine what kind of information should be sent to Washington in support of the centennial celebration.
    
2. The Executive Committee formally approved the recommendation that the annual meeting dates be moved to the third weekend of February, whenever possible, so as to not conflict with Spring Break at some state institutions.
    
3. President Judy Jones proposed that section funds be used to help cover travel expenses for section officers attending national MAA meetings when they are formally representing the section.  The Executive Committee approved this proposal.

Awards Committee

Florida Section
Mathematical Association of America

The Awards Committee is seeking recommendations for two awards to be given at the state meeting in 2005:

Send your nominations by Friday, October 15, 2004, to the Chair of the Awards Committee:

June White
St. Petersburg College
whitejune@spcollege.edu

Past award recipients can be found at http://www.spcollege.edu/central/maa/archives/.

Nominating Committee

Florida Section
Mathematical Association of America

The Nominating Committee is soliciting nominations for the positions:

Please send names of any potential officers including your own if you are interested to the committee chair:

Judy Jones
Past President
jonesj3@mac.com

I am happy to tell you that the MAA is, as Treasurer John Kenelly put it, "growing, and growing in complexity."  Kenelly went on to say that the Association has "four 6’s:  $6 million in real estate, $6 million in grants, $6 million in endowment, and $6 million in investments."  The growth has required changes in accounting procedures.

The Carriage House has been turned into a Mathematical Sciences Conference Center, with a completion date of Winter 2005.  It will provide an excellent venue for all kinds of seminars and meetings in Washington, D.C.

The MAA will have its centennial in 2015, and an archivist from the University of Texas is setting up procedures for gathering information from all the sections with a view to publishing a volume on the history of the Association.  The Board of Governors recommends that each section gather, if they have not already done so, documents on the history of the section.  Our section has asked David Kerr to this project.

There is an excellent brochure available called "We Do Math!  Careers in the Mathematical Sciences."  There is room on the bottom of the front page to put your own institutional logo or other information.  It is available from the Bookstore at MAA Online.

Dues for student members will increase from $20 to $25 next year.  For this, they receive Focus and Math Horizons.  There will also be a small increase in regular membership dues.

A new SIGMAA for secondary school teachers has been formed.  They plan two workshops for teachers of AP calculus.

Project NExT suggests that, in this era of budget cuts in most institutions, that each section consider sponsoring a Project NExT fellow.

The following five students presented at the 37th Annual Meeting at the University of Central Florida on February 20-21, 2004.

Shannon Jessie
Florida Atlantic University
Honors College

Can predator-prey models explain invasion dynamics?

Abstract:  The infamous brown tree snake invasion on Guam motivates our study of population models involving one predator and two prey species.  Starting with the standard (single-prey) Lotka-Volterra model, we add layers of complexity in an attempt to explain the invasion dynamics.

Ryan Wolf
Florida Atlantic University
Honors College

From leaky flow to free fall:  stimulating fluid drain

Abstract:  We present two computer simulations for draining a tank through an arbitrary-sized hole.  Macroscopically, we derive a nonlinear ODE from simple fluid physics and solve it numerically.  Microscopically, we model the fluid molecules as agents with simple behavior.  Our goal is to observe the macroscopic behavior in the microscopic model.

Ana Staninska
University of South Florida

Stochastic automata networks

Abstract:  In this presentation, we will survey the methods of Stochastic Automata Network (SAN).  These are used in the modeling of parallel and distributed computer systems, because of their compact way of representing the state transition matrix.  We will focus on the modeling and analysis of complex systems, the numerical issues and difficulties that are arising from the automata’s interactions.

Daniela Genova
University of South Florida

Models in Membrane Computing

Abstract:  Membrane systems are new models of computation inspired by basic properties of living cells.  A membrane system (P system) consists of hierarchical arrangement of regions equipped with multisets of objects and evolution rules.  We present the computation process in some variants of P systems along with examples and recent results.

Laura Lynch
Florida Atlantic University
Honors College

Factorability in the ring Z[ √-5 ]

Abstract:  The fundamental theorem of arithmetic says that any integer greater than 2 can be written uniquely as a product of primes.  This presentation will examine irreducibility (the analog of primality) in Z[ √-5 ], a ring in which unique factorization fails.