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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, Joy Becker, joy.becker@wartburg.edu.
The centennial MathFest meeting was a grand success. There were more than 2500 registrations which exceeded the previous high by about a 1000. There were a number of celebrations and gatherings, include a crowded group photo.
The Board of Governor's meeting, which preceded the general meeting, was also a success. Note Francis Su was in his role as president, transitioning from Bob Devaney. Francis addressed some issues facing the association, including membership. He performed a simple survey of some Project NExT participants to try to understand this issue. He established some Principles for Action to address the concerns (recruit younger, increase member-only benefits, adapt, need to take risks). The Treasurer pointed out that 2014 was the 10th consecutive year of annual operating deficits with a total of $1,300,000, hitting our free reserves. The good news is that the break-even point is getting closer each year.
A focus point of considerable importance concerns the result of the Governance Task Force. This group put forth three models to consider for future models of how the board might operate. These are summarized on http://sections.maa.org/iowa/Meetings/Recent/2015/lamgov.php. There was plenty of discussion of these models and it is likely that no model will arrive intact as a candidate at the January meeting but rather some shuffling of various aspects will be put together in two models for a possible vote. If you have any thoughts on these issues, please forward them to me.
Submitted by Section Governor Al Hibbard
Central College
hibbarda@central.edu
Greetings Iowa MAA members and potential members,
A recurring theme I've been hearing starting at Mathfest is "What can the MAA do for you that you cannot do for yourself?" The Mathematical Association of America is a wonderful and worthy association and is looking to assist its members in their endeavors. There are numerous big picture endeavors single mathematicians are unable to do which the MAA, a large group of mathematicians, can do; however, it cannot do this if it does not know what you need. If you have a suggestion, please do not keep it to yourself.
As mentioned at our 2015 fall meeting, a centennial planning committee has been formed to help make next year's conference, our local centennial, extra spectacular. Members of the Iowa section can contact the centennial committee with suggestions on making this meeting spectacular by logging in on our website and using the Communicate tab.
At the section officer's meeting at Mathfest this past August, there was discussion about Business, Industry and Government (BIG) involvement in regional sections (http://sigmaa.maa.org/big/). There are mathematicians who are not in academia who would enjoy attending our meetings and being welcomed into our mathematical home in Iowa. As we look toward our next section meeting in Des Moines, there will be ample opportunity to invite local BIG mathematicians to be involved in our meeting.
Another opportunity mentioned at the section officer's meeting was the PIC Math program (http://www.maa.org/programs/faculty-and-departments/pic-math). PIC Math stands for Preparation for Industrial Careers in Mathematical Sciences. Two faculty from Iowa participated in the 2015 summer workshop designed to prepare faculty to run a credit bearing industry-problem-based course during the Spring 2016 semester. Students will work with problems encountered by industry to gain skills desired by industrial careers.
Finally, if you are looking to get involved, either locally or nationally, please do so. Our governor, Al Hibbard, is seeking feedback on the proposed restructuring of the Board of Governors. Please contact him if you have an opinion on the matter. We are looking for someone to help with the database of scanned historical documents. We are accepting proposals for what to do with our funds. Put together a formal proposal for consideration and send it to me with IA MAA Request For Funds in the subject line. If you have half of an idea (for a funding request or an outreach activity or just something you would like to see the section doing) and would like help getting connected with other members of the section who might work on it with you, please let me know. If you are on Twitter, try using #iamaa2015 or #maaiowa to get in touch with other MAA members in Iowa. Nationally, they are seeking people to work on committees. Go here (http://www.maa.org/about-maa/governance/council-and-committees-list) for a list of MAA committees.
Submitted by Section Chair Amanda Matson
Clarke University
amanda.matson@clarke.edu
Here is the final report from the Section Meeting: Report from Treasurer
Submitted by Section Treasurer Jonas Meyer
Loras College
jonas.meyer@loras.edu
Steve Butler of Iowa State University was awarded the 2015 MAA Iowa Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.
Nominations for the 2016 MAA Iowa Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics are now being accepted. Please send any questions to Section Secretary, Susan Crook, susan.crook@loras.edu.
The Nominating Committee (Ruth Berger, Alex Kleiner, and Jon White) for the Section's next Governor, who represents us with the national MAA, has selected Murphy Waggoner, Simpson College, and Mariah Birgen, Wartburg College, as candidates. The election will be held through the national office. Please contact Jon White, JWhite@Coe.edu, Chair of the Nominating Committee, with any questions.
The 21st annual Iowa Collegiate Math Competition was held on Saturday, February 21, 2015, at ISU. UNI was the winner, and the trophy was presented to UNI at the fall section meeting. The 2016 competition will be held April 2 at UNI. See the contest page for further information.
It was decided at the Executive Committee meeting that the competition coordinator will have a term length of five years. A subcommittee of the Executive Committee will be appointed to choose the new coordinator. Interested individuals are encouraged to volunteer, or nominations for the coordinator may be sent to members of the Executive Committee.
For questions or comments, contact the competition coordinator, Ruth BergerJanuary 6-9, 2016 - JMM in Seattle, WA.
August 3-6, 2016 - MathFest in Columbus, OH.
October TBA, 2016 - Annual Meeting of the Iowa Section, Grand View University, Des Moines, Iowa.
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 and have them e-mail the the editor, Joy Becker, joy.becker@wartburg.edu.
Tom Linton completed his spring 2015 sabbatical work on broadening his understanding of statistics education and the writing and pedagogy of good “clicker” questions for introductory statistics.
Wendy Weber has an upcoming spring 2016 sabbatical to continue her work in developing materials to help in-service and pre-service mathematics teachers in the areas of probability and statistics.
Russ Goodman taught an honors seminar on Sports Analytics in the spring of 2015, taking a group of students to the Carolinas Sports Analytics Meeting. He is excited to teach the honors seminar again in the spring of 2016.
Russ Goodman, Al Hibbard, and Mark Mills all spent one week of the summer in Kansas City reading AP Calculus (Goodman and Hibbard) exams and AP Statistics (Mills) exams.
Cal Van Niewaal is beginning phased retirement this year. He is teaching half-time this year and plans to continue half-time through 2017-2018, essentially filling in for other faculty members who will be on leave. The department has begun to search for a tenure track faculty member to replace Cal starting in Fall 2016.
Stephen Hughes filled the open faculty position in computer science last year and is now beginning he second year at Coe. He has begun to add new courses to the rotation and has revitalized student research in computer science.
Enrollments in the mathematical sciences classes have continued to grow. This fall a fourth section had to be added when more than 100 students wanted to enroll in Calculus I. A second section of Computer Science I was also added to provide enough seats for 52 students. Upper level class enrollments are also healthy, with 14 students taking modern algebra, 12 enrolled in probability and statistics, and 19 studying graph theory.
Many Luther department news items were listed in the Spring newsletter, here a few new developments since then:
This fall, for the first time in recent memory, Luther is a preparing a team to participate in the William Lowell Putnam Competition this December
Ruth Berger's article "From Circle to Hyperbola in Taxicab Geometry" was published in the October 2015 issue of NCTM's magazine "Mathematics Teacher".
Richard Bernatz was invited to the Iowa Flood Center on the University of Iowa campus on April 1, 2015, to present his results on modeling stage and volume flow for the Upper Iowa River using a blocked Topmodel scheme. His talk also featured results of his qualitative and statistical comparison of ground-based gauge and Stage IV multisensor precipitation estimates for surface rainfall depth and intensities.
Kyle Fey led two students this summer in a research project, where they studied how the structure of contact networks in populations impacts threshold vaccination levels required for herd immunity. One of the students is presenting this work in November at the Midstates Undergraduate Research Symposium, held at the University of Chicago.
Tommy Occhipinti is a new tenure-track hire in our department, and joins us most recently from Carleton College in Minnesota. Tommy earned his PhD from the University of Arizona, studying under Douglas Ulmer. His main research area is in arithmetic geometry, specifically Mordell-Weil groups of elliptic curves over function fields, but he has published in other areas as well, including two recent papers on which isomorphism types of finite groups occur as unit groups of rings. In addition to our regular course offerings, Tommy will teach a new special topics course in Combinatorics this spring.
Joyce Becker is currently serving a term on the Board of Directors of AMTE the Iowa Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. They hosted a session in September at the ICTM State Meeting in Des Moines. The next Iowa AMTE statewide meeting will be April 2, 2016 in Ames .
This fall we added a new Associate Professor to our math faculty at Mount Mercy University, Dr. Robert Todd. Robb comes to us from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Charles Ashbacher
cashbacher@prodigy.net
Charlie Ashbacher has edited and published "Topics in Recreational Mathematics 5/2015.” The book is a continuation of the publication of topics in recreational mathematics. Ashbacher is the owner of Charles Ashbacher Technologies and an adjunct instructor at Upper Iowa University.
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