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Iowa Section of the Mathematical Association of America |
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This is the web edition of the Iowa Section Newsletter. To receive a printed copy of the newsletter or to make suggestions/comments, please contact the editor, Al Hibbard, hibbarda@central.edu.
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Dear Iowa Section Members,
In one piece of business, an electronic vote for Governor was completed. We want to thank Cal Van Niewaal for his work as section Governor these past three years, and welcome Joel Haack as the new Governor.
The section meeting at UNI last October was a success, as always. Make plans for the upcoming meeting in Cedar Rapids at Coe College on October 22-23, 2010. The speaker will be Rick Gillman of Valparaiso University.
Cal Van Niewaal (cvanniew@coe.edu) is heading a committee to receive nominations for the MAA Certificate of Meritorious Service. This national award is given to recognize members for their service to a Section of the Association, but only comes around to each section every 5 years. It is our year to be able to make this award, so please send your suggestions to Cal or the other committee members, Jim Freeman (jfreeman@cornellcollege.edu), and Larry Naylor (lawrence.naylor@drake.edu).
Murphy Waggoner
Section Chair
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The 16th annual Iowa Collegiate Undergraduate Mathematics Competition was held on Saturday, March 13, at Grinnell College. The winner is "Math 414" from Iowa State University, with team members Nathan Rehfuss, Kevin Moss, and Long Su. Congratulations! Second Place is "The Chiss Ascendancy" from Grinnell College. Third Place is "Sausage Egg McMuffin" from Luther College. Problems and solutions can be viewed on the competition web site. The trophy will be presented to ISU at the Fall meeting.
This year we had 19 teams from 8 different institutions. This is a little lower than usual, due to the fact that several Colleges were on Spring break that week. The MCM modeling competition had moved to later in February this year, which pushed our competition date to mid-March. Apparently not a good choice for many of you, sorry about that. Next year's competition will probably be held at ISU, check the competition website later this Fall for details.
See the contest page for further information. For questions or comment, contact:
Ruth Berger
Luther College
bergerr@luther.edu
April 9-10 2010 - Midwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium, Simpson College, Indianola.
August 5-7, 2010 - MathFest 2010, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
October 22-23, 2010 - Annual Meeting of the Iowa Section, Coe College, Cedar Rapids.
January 5-8, 2011 - Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans.
The following items have been submitted by the liaisons for the corresponding departments. If your department has news that is not included, please contact your liaison so that it can be included.
Central College
Al Hibbard
hibbarda@central.edu
Wendy Weber spearheaded the transition of holding the Little Hawkeye Conferencee math contests at Grinnell College to being held at Central College. It was a successful competition.
Under Mark Mills' leadership, we now have an actuarial science major.
Russ Goodman was recently given an award for institutional service.
Clarke College
Amanda Matson
Amanda.Matson@clarke.edu
Clarke College is pleased to welcome Amanda Matson as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics beginning Fall 2009. Dr. Matson received her Ph.D. from North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND in 2008 and spent the 2008-2009 school year as adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota - Morris. She joins Judy Munshower and Sean Bradley in the Mathematics Department at Clarke College.
Iowa State University
Stephen Willson
swillson@iastate.edu
News from Iowa State University's Mathematics Department
1. Jennifer Davidson has become Associate Chair, replacing Elgin Johnston in that position.
2. Elgin Johnston has been named Director of CUME (Center for Undergraduate Mathematics Education), located within the Mathematics Department. The mission of CUME is to study ways in which mathematics and mathematicians can interact with students. This includes collaborating with other units on campus, education offices, institutions and organizations in Iowa and beyond to promote and emphasize mathematical sciences.
3. Professors Bob Gregorac, Jim Murdock, and Howard Levine are retiring this semester.
Luther College
Ruth Berger
bergerr@luther.edu
Luther's submission for the Spring 2010 Iowa MAA Newsletter:
In 2009 we graduated 13 mathematics majors and 4 math-stats majors.
Four Luther teams participated in the 2010 Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM), results pending.
One of our Luther teams took 3rd place in the Iowa Undergraduate Collegiate Mathematics Competition this Spring.
Ruth Berger was inspired by last Fall's Iowa section MAA plenary speaker to try and have Decorah Schools participate in the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC). She is starting with a weekly after school "Math Fun Hour" for 5th graders this semester.
Richard Bernatz's text entitled "Fourier series and numerical methods for partial differential equations" is scheduled to be published by John Wiley & Sons July 2010.
Michael Johnson was hired in a tenure-track position to begin fall semester 2010. Mike is a Northwestern University Ph.D., with research interests in dynamical systems. He is currently finishing a visiting professorship in mathematics at Swarthmore College.
Paul R. Savariappan presented a research article entitled "Statistical Inference for Bulk Arrival and Bulk Service Queues" 5TH Asian Mathematical Conference 22 - 26, JUNE 2009, Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He also presented a research article entitled "Statistical Analysis of tandem Queues with Blocking" International Conference on Statistics and Information Analytics(ICSIA - 2010) 11 - 13, January 2010, Loyola College, Chennai, India. Paul published "Statistical Inference for Bulk Arrival Queue" (2009). Proceedings of the 5-th Asian Mathematical Conference, Malaysia. Pages 109- 116.
Northwestern College
Kim Jongerius
kimj@nwciowa.edu
In each of the past two years, Northwestern College sent teams to the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (Stockholm, Sweden in 2009 and Harbin, China in 2010). Each year, one of the three team members was a math major (Curt Van Wyk, both years) and one was an actuarial science major (Ben Kester in 2009 and Mark Haselhoff in 2010).
Tim Huffman was promoted to full professor this year. He continues part-time work for Great West Insurance. Kim Jongerius was elected vice president of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences.
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