MathFest Report

Florida Section
The Mathematical Association of America

Pam Crawford

Report from the MAA Section Representative to MathFest in San Jose

This year's MathFest was held in San Jose, California, from Friday, August 3^rd, to Sunday, August 5^th, and was a joint meeting between the MAA and other organizations. In particular, the Society for Mathematical Biology organized several events focusing on biology, and the Euler Society arranged a variety of special proceedings celebrating 2007 as the 300^th anniversary of Euler's birth. Popular MathFest events included the screening of Flatland: The Movie, featuring the voices of Martin Sheen, Michael York and Kristen Bell; Math Jeopardy featuring four undergraduate teams; and an invited address "Euler in Three Acts" by William Dunham.

At the MAA Officer's meeting, representatives from the twenty-nine sections of the MAA were divided into six focus groups to discuss questions related to sections such as:

	What are the most successful program components of your section meetings?
	What is your section doing to attract faculty members from all types of institutions? What could be done?
	What is your section doing to involve graduate students in your section meetings? What could be done?
	What is your section doing to involve other members of the mathematical community? What could be done?

There was no consensus on answers to these questions but it was interesting to learn some differences between section such as sections whose meetings include only plenary speakers, with no contributed papers, and sections with semiannual one-day meetings. Our section is one of a few that holds meetings jointly with other organizations, such as AMATYC.

In addition, I and several other participants discussed problems including "orphan states" in the sections’ programs – such as Hawaii in the Northern California, Nevada, and Hawaii Section; part of Canada in the Northeast Section; and Puerto Rico in our Florida Section.