Illinois Section of the MAA

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Fall 1999 Newletter

Table of Contents

• Message From the Chair
• Governor's Report
• 2000 Annual Meeting
• Project NexT
• Twenty Five and Fifty Year Club
• ISMAA Budget
• Treasurer's Report
• Distinguished Service Award
• Ad-hoc Committee on Algebra

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Chair's Report

Mathfest 99 took place this summer in Providence, Rhode Island. I attended the meeting and enjoyed it immensely. Providence turned out to be a delightful location for the meeting. I found the meeting to be productive and I have many pleasant memories of our visit to Providence. The agenda was excellent, the weather was outstanding, the community interesting, and the food was good. I especially enjoyed my visits to Brown University and the AMS headquarters.

Larry Morley and I attended the MAA Section Officers Meeting at Mathfest. Several items caught my attention at that meeting. One, in particular, made a strong impression on me and I will say more about that later. First, a round of quick comments regarding the MAA nationally. Marcia Sward will retire from the position of Executive Director of the MAA at the end of the year. Next January, Tina Straley of Kennesaw State University will become the new Executive Director. I know everyone is grateful to Marcia Sward for her excellent work with the MAA and we all wish Tina Straley the best of luck in her new position. We learned at the Section Officers meeting that the national office hopes to streamline the section bylaws. We should see some of the preliminary changes to be suggested at future national meetings. Also, MAA has approved the formation of special interest groups (SIGMAA) similar to those of SIAM. You may want to join one or more of them. This may also be a way to entice some of our colleagues into active MAA membership. It was announced that each section must have a contact person for dealing with IRS. The default person for that task will be the Secretary-Treasurer of the section. Sections wishing to appoint someone different must do so via a special form.

For me the most informative portion of the Section Officer's Meeting involved the MAA Sections Report for 1998-1999 from the Committee on Sections. That report was well presented by David Stone of Georgia Southern University. Some of you may remember that David was one of our invited speakers at our spring meeting at McKendree College a couple of years ago. David had compiled twenty nine section reports into a very informative summary document and table. I carefully reviewed those materials and an happy to report that our section engages in most of the activities of the composite group. We did fail to give a Teaching Award last year, but I am confident that our Awards Committee will remedy that situation this year. Please give the Awards Committee the help that they need in order to do so. This year Neale Fadden will chair the Awards Committee. Other members of the Awards Committee include Iraj Kalantari and Herb Kasube.

One point of concern at the Section Officer's meeting was the issue of declining MAA memberships. As I listened to the discussion on this topic, I scanned the table which David Stone had prepared. That table summarized what the twenty nine sections had done at their annual meetings. A figure that caught my attention was one that indicated that 14% of our members had attended our spring meeting last year. This week as I sat down to prepare my Chair's report these numbers came back to me so I decided to extract some tables of my own from David's summary table. The tables that I derived led me to believe that we could increase our membership and improve our attendance at our spring meetings in at least two ways. First let me summarize what I discovered in my rapidly constructed tables.

The first table that I constructed using Stone's table was one which compared the percentage of section members in attendance at a section meeting in 1998-1999. Those percentages ran from a high of 86% to a low of 8%. Our section had an attendance of 14% which placed us twenty-fourth in attendance, i.e. only five sections had a lower percentage of members in attendance at their annual meetings. I started to ask why. Certainly, our section engages in almost all of the activities that other sections do. I think that I found two significant areas where we could improve. One is in the area of student participation at our section meetings. Using David Stone's table, I constructed a subtable of presentations by students at 1998-1999 section meetings. I found that the numbers of presentations at section meetings attributed to students varied from a high of 38 to a low of 1. David Stone's table indicated that five students made presentations last spring at our section meeting. John Haverhals tells me that the number of student presentations was actually six. That would place us in a four way tie for the seventeenth position in this category. I think that these numbers suggests that we should make an concentrated effort to attract more of our students to our spring meeting by emphasizing student papers. We already have some fine student activities for them. However, I believe that we could encourage more undergraduate and graduate student research presentations. Two schools in the Midwest have for a number of years sponsored highly successful undergraduate research conferences in mathematics. They are Rose-Hulman and Miami of Ohio. I would encourage our section to look at those excellent programs for ideas about how to encourage more of our students to present papers at our spring meetings.

The third and last table which I extracted from David's table was one which summarized the number of papers presented by members at their annual section meetings. I found that the number of members presenting papers at their section meetings in 1998-1999 ranged from 0 to 83. If my figures are correct, we had three papers presented by members, not counting invited addresses. That placed us in position twenty-eight. To me that suggests that we should work harder to involve some of our more research oriented colleagues in our section meetings. We also should encourage our active members to share their research experiences at the spring meetings. Actually, I have had more than one individual comment to me that we needed more papers presented by our members at the spring meetings. We have had good involvement from our members who are more teaching oriented. We have also had excellent involvement from two-year college faculty. I am suggesting that we encourage more involvement from faculty who may be more inclined to participate in the AMS or SIAM. The MAA is an excellent place to bring all of our diverse interests together for the good of the Illinois mathematics community. I would like to end this report by asking each of members to think about what they can do to encourage more student and faculty presentations at our spring meetings. I believe that this is one way to counter declining memberships and to generate some excitement for mathematics in our state.

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GOVERNOR'S REPORT

Greetings from Macomb where the late summer dry weather has not prevented Nature's annual fall array of beautiful color as we enjoy the changing of the season. As most of you know, I retired from Western Illinois University July 31 after 30 years of service with fifteen years as chair of the Department of Mathematics. Dr. Iraj Kalantari is now very ably leading the Department of Mathematics as chairperson. Many of you will recall that Iraj has served as a member of the ISMAA Board of Directors and effectively served as editor of our newsletter for a number of years just prior to Rich Wilders recently assuming this responsibility.

I continue to have an office on campus and a part-time contract for this year to work on initiatives in secondary teacher education, assessment of student learning, and issues connected with articulation to post secondary education. I look forward to this new arrangement giving me more time to focus on serving the Illinois Section as Governor. Of course my wife and I have also enjoyed the freedom and time to do some traveling and took a two-week excursion that included time for me to participate in the Providence Mathfest.

The Providence Mathfest was from my perspective a very successful meeting. More than 1,100 were in attendance and, from the warn welcome extended in the opening sessions to the closing Rhode Island Clam Bake, the program was filled with a full spectrum of social, professional, and educational treats. Our local MAA hosts and program committee did a great job and the AMS and Brown University were especially gracious in their warn welcome and participation. If you have not attended a summer meeting recently you should put one in your plans soon.

Mathfest 2000 is in Los Angeles at UCLA August 3-5 just prior to the AMS meetings and Mathfest 2001 will be August 9-11 in the mid-west at either the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, or Saint Mary's College at Notre Dame, Indiana. Check out the advance information about these meetings and much much more by visiting http://www.maa.org.

The summer Board of Governors' meeting was July 30 prior to the opening of Mathfest. Professor Tina Straley, Associate Vice President for Scholarship and Graduate Studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, was approved to become the next Executive Director of the MAA succeeding Marcia P. Sward. Several things are being pursued to keep the MAA on solid footing financially as we move into the next millennium and the details of a proposed change in the Bylaws to merge the Executive and Finance Committees is available on the Web at MAA Online. Much of the credit for the positive financial situation as reported has been achieved by cutbacks and sacrifices by the Washington staff along with the dedicated service of volunteers. Membership figures continue to be troubling in that we (along with many professional societies) are losing members. The ISMAA Board is looking at different initiatives to increase active participation in our sectional meetings and related activities and we would all appreciate any suggestions.

Some other issues of primary importance discussed by the Board related to the New Agenda Report. Included in the report is a recommendation for a change in the mission statement of the MAA and five priorities are identified for the new agenda (see the complete report at MAA Online). The Governors agreed that it was a worthwhile effort to look for a new mission statement that would more effectively convey the message that the MAA has an agenda and purpose that is more inclusive.

The five priorities as listed below were endorsed by the Board of Governors with the provision that concerns and potential problems be addressed as the process of implementation moves forward.

1. Better Serve and Expand Our Diverse Membership.
2. Communicate the Programs, Products, Services, and Activities of the MAA More Effectively.
3. Continue to Develop MAA Online, Making it a More Inviting, Sophisticated
4. Member Destination.
5. Facilitate the Formation of Special Interest Groups (SIGs).
6. Explore the Possibility of Launching a General Interest Magazine.

It was noted that the establishment of special interest groups within the Association, to be called SIGMAAs, is a fundamental change in the structure of the MAA and steps should be taken to ensure that SIGMAAs encourage participation in the MAA and not compete with Sections in the programs of the Association. The Executive Committee shall regulate SIGMAAs. The idea of a general magazine received support given that its format is distinct from other publications and that it is effective in reaching out to an audience that is not now being served by other publications. More study will be given to this.

I hope my report generates some thoughts and ideas that you will want to share concerning the support or opposition you think should be given to some of the changes being considered. We would really like to hear from you in the form of a message to me personally or, even better, an article for publication in our newsletter.

Larry Morley, Professor Emeritus Department of Mathematics
Western Illinois University
L-Morley@wiu.edu
309/298-1382

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2000 Annual Meeting at North Central College
March 30, 31 and April 1 2000

Proposals for presentations are still being accepted. We are particularly interested in talks relating to the history of mathematics. Other traditional categories include research results and classroom techniques. Send your proposals to:

History of Math: Tom Bengston (Agustana)
mabengston@augustana.edu>

Research: James Olson (Western Illinois University)
jr-olson@wiu.edu>

Classroom Innovations: Jim Trefzger ( Parkland College)
Jtrefzger@parkland.cc.il.us

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PROJECT NExT

The second ISMAA Project NExT program was held last April 9 and 10 in conjunction with the annual meeting at Augustana College. The program began on Friday morning with a panel discussion on using computer algebra systems in the classroom, followed by an opening lunch. The program continued on Saturday, after the closing address of the annual meeting, with a box lunch and large group discussion about creating a portfolio to document professional development.

The ISMAA Project NExT program is a sectional version of a successful national MAA program which helps new college faculty to improve the teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics. Another goal of the program is to help new faculty members to begin getting involved in the mathematical community beyond their own institution.

Two new sectional Project NExT fellows joined in the program last spring, Roberta Christie from Shawnee Community College and Sarah Ziesler of Dominican University. Also taking part were the three sectional fellows from the previous year, Angela Gum of Lincoln Land Community College, Dave Klandermann of Trinity Christian College, and Andrew Leahy of Knox College. Other participants included several national Project NexT fellows who are members of the ISMAA and the section officers. Two of the invited speakers at the annual meeting who are active participants in the national Project NExT, Mariah Birgen and Bob Megginson, also participated in the program.

The ISMAA Project NExT program will continue next spring at the annual meeting at North Central College. The program will open on Friday morning with a panel discussion on teaching upper level mathematics courses, followed by an opening lunch. On Saturday afternoon the program will conclude with lunch and a large group discussion on mathematics courses for general education requirements.

During the first three years of this program funding for the two lunches, as well as to pay meeting registration and meeting banquet fees for sectional NExT fellows, has been provided by a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation, via the MAA, in accordance with the terms of the Exxon grant for funding the national Project NExT.

Anyone within their first four years of full-time teaching (after finishing a master's or doctoral degree) at any two or four-year college or university in Illinois is eligible to become an ISMAA Project NExT fellow. Also eligible are any graduate students at universities in Illinois who are completing their Ph.D. studies.

Application materials for the ISMAA Project NExT program will be mailed to chairs of mathematics departments early in 2000. They should arrive by January 15, 2000. For more information about this program contact:

Jim Marshall, Department of Mathematics
Illinois College 1101 W. College Ave.
Jacksonville, IL 62650
(217) 245-3432
jmarshal@hilltop.ic.edu

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TWENTY FIVE AND FIFTY YEAR CLUB

Jon Johnson, ISMAA Section Secretary Treasurer has been informed by the National of the following individual's long term commitment to mathematics:

25 Years of Membership in MAA: David Atkinson, Frank Averill, Kenneth Berk, Satyabrata Chakrabarti, Arunas Dagys, Peter Dordal, Susanna Epp, Leonard Evens, Steven Galovich, Steven Jordan, Cary Webb, David Werner, Walter Wild, Lyman Wilmot, Sandy Zavell

50 Years of Membership in MAA: Robert Reisel, Evelyn Wantland

Congratulations to all of you - see you in Naperville in March!

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1999-2000 Annual Budget of the ISMAA

Receipts:

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Treasurer's Report

Treasurer's Report

7/1/98 to 6/30/99

Balance on hand 7/1/98 $9336.24

Receipts