40th Annual Meeting

The 40^th Joint Annual Meetings of the Mathematics Association of America, Florida Section (MAA-FL) and the Florida Two Year College Mathematics Association (FTYCMA) was held at Tallahassee Community College on February 16 and 17. John Salak and Liz Dameron arranged delightful food and exceptional accommodations for the meeting.  Events began with a FTYCMA business meeting and annual luncheon. FTYCMA invited all conference participants to join them for the delicious BBQ sponsored by Thompson Publishing.

Bruce Edwards, from the University of Florida, kicked off the joint program with an enlightening and entertaining look behind the scenes of a calculator. Joel Berman from VCC put together an engaging collection of talks for our enjoyment on Friday afternoon. We concluded the presentations on Friday with Carl Cowen, past president of the MAA, giving the second plenary address “Connections between Mathematics and Biology”. Carl also helped the section celebrate with Marilyn Repsher as the recipient of the MAA’s National Distinguished Service Award.  

A break was included in our program to give time for our 126 attendees to visit with our sponsors: Key College Publishing, Pearson-Prentice Hall, John Wiley and Sons, Thompson Higher Education and McGraw-Hill. Friday evening closed with a conference banquet and awards ceremony where Jacci White from Saint Leo University received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the MAA-FL section while Joe Hargray from St. Petersburg College received the Distinguished Service Award.

Saturday began with a refreshing breakfast provided by Pearson-Prentice Hall. Several informative presentations led to our final key note speaker. James Tanton from St. Mark’s School, the MAA Beckenbach book prize winner, amused us all with a talk titled “More than a Dozen Proofs that 1=2: A Misguided Review of all of Mathematics.”

We continued the tradition of contests for students at the conference. The winner for the Integral contest was Tram Ta of Miami Dade College and the runner up was Huong Marks from Manatee Community College. The Sudoku contest winner was Megan Logue from Jacksonville University.  Highlights from the MAA-FL annual business meeting and luncheon are always the elections for new officers. Please congratulate Joel Berman from VCC as President Elect, David Kerr from Eckerd as VP-elect for Programs, and Bettina Capuano from SFCC as VP-elect for Site.  

This conference could not have been successful without the behind the scenes work by the MAA-FL Executive board including:

John Waters who gives up at least four weekends per year in order to make this conference happen between registrations, conference materials, recognitions, and any questions related to the finances for this event.

Stephanie Fitchett who hosted the conference last year and shared all of that experience so only a few wheels needed to be reinvented this year. 

Dan Jelsovsky who coordinated several student activities and encouraged student participation in this annual event. 

Bill Rush who keeps track of all the information and makes sure the appropriate information is distributed to each one of you through coordination of the MAA-FL section web page and listserv as well as his breadth of knowledge from his years of service to this section.

And last, but most rather than least, is David Kerr who has the most tremendous MAA database of information in his mind and is always willing and helpful in sharing that information at any time.

I look forward to another great conference at Florida Southern College on February 15 and 16, 2008.

Jacci White
Past President, MAA-FL