Fall 2009 Newsletter

From the Chair Call for KYMAA Nominations
From the Chair-Elect The Annual KYMAA Meeting
The Governor's Corner From the Student Chapters Coordinator
KYMAA Teaching Award News from the Chapters!!!
Call for Adler Award Nominations

From the Chair

On behalf of the Executive Committee of KYMAA, I extend to you best wishes for a productive and successful year. We are very appreciative of your interest and involvement in KYMAA, and look forward to its continuation. It seems hard to believe that we are already several weeks into a new academic year! As I write this note, I am thinking about what I will be including on my first round of examinations and wondering when I will find time to grade all of the wonderful assignments I have concocted for my students. One must assume it will all get done in the end.

Our annual Spring Meeting at Kentucky State University this past March was a great success, and I thank Robert Hebble and the rest of his local arrangements committee for all their work. Planning is already well underway for this year's meeting, which promises to be most enjoyable. We are privileged to be holding the meeting at the University of Kentucky in conjunction with the Spring Southeastern Sectional Meeting of the AMS. Elsewhere in the newsletter you can read about our program (in the note from Chair-Elect Dora Ahmadi) as well as about the special lectures at UK being given both before our meeting and during the AMS meeting. I encourage you to attend as many of these events as possible (note there is a discount in registration fees given to those attending both the KYMAA and AMS meetings). And while the call for contributed talks and panels will not be officially made until January, it is not too early to begin thinking about possible topics on which you or your favorite student(s) could speak.

Congratulations are in order to Christine Shannon of Centre College and David Shannon of Transylvania University, co-winners of the 2009 KYMAA Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics! Please take note of the call for nominations in this newsletter for the 2010 Award. Great teaching goes in all of our departments year after year, and I beseech you to honor one of your deserving colleagues by nominating them this fall!

Finally, we will hold elections at the spring meeting for Vice-Chair and Newsletter Editor. If you or someone you know might be interested in serving in one of these capacities, please contact one of the members of the Nominating Committee, who are listed below in the Call for KYMAA Nominations.

Please feel free to contact any of the members of the Executive Committee if you have any questions or concerns about KYMAA -- we welcome your comments and feedback!

Will Harris
Chair
William_Harris@georgetowncollege.edu


From the Chair-Elect

Get ready for an exciting celebration of mathematics! Plan to participate in our 2010 Joint Meeting of the Kentucky Section of the MAA and the AMS Southeastern Section. The MAA portion of the meeting will take place March 26 and conclude on March 27. The AMS Southeastern Sectional meeting will begin on March 27 and will end March 28. The meeting will take place at the University of Kentucky. The Invited Speakers are:

  • Bruce Reznick, University of Illinois, "The John and Harriet J. Absentminded Professor of Mathematics"
  • Martha Siegel, Towson University, Past Secretary of the MAA
  • Christine and David Shannon from Center College and Transylvania University respectively, 2009 recipients of the KY Section Distinguished Teaching Award

The University of Kentucky will also be hosting the 2010 Erdos Memorial Lecture given by Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University, on Saturday evening.

Our program will begin with a meeting of the KY Section NExT on Friday morning. Encourage your non-tenured faculty to participate in our Section NExT. It is a great opportunity to network and pick up great ideas to build a successful career. The rest of the program will also include panel discussions and contributed talks by faculty and students. Begin planning to give a talk and to bring your students to the conference. Abstracts for panels and talks will be solicited in late January, so there is plenty of time for you to make your plans to speak.

Begin planning to attend this exhilarating event in Lexington in March!

Dora Ahmadi
Chair-Elect
d.ahmadi@moreheadstate.edu


The Governor's Corner

Those who missed Mathfest missed a great meeting. Portland is a wonderful location. Besides the natural wonders of the surrounding area, the Portland Art Museum was holding an exhibit of works by Escher - with a discount for conference attendees. This was very popular!

After many years as MAA Secretary, Martha Siegel has stepped down from that post. Barbara Faires has been appointed as the next secretary for a five-year term beginning January 2010.

Financial issues continue to be a concern for the MAA. While our investments have not done as badly as those of other organizations, and the reserves have been ample to meet needs, the national office has been compelled to implement many cost cutting measures. For instance, two or three staff positions were not filled. On the other hand, the two annual meetings have drawn well for the last couple years and were "bright spots" financially.

At their August meeting, the Board of Governors voted to begin offering electronic memberships in the MAA. These memberships will, at a reduced rate, allow electronic access to all three journals instead of print access. For undergraduates, an electronic membership will include electronic access to Mathematics Magazine and the College Math Journal. For graduate students, this membership will include electronic access to all three journals. As always, student rates are substantially discounted from regular memberships. This new category of membership will become available as soon as the national office's technology can support them.

A report was submitted that examined the functioning of the sections. Generally, the various sections do a good job of putting on an annual section meeting. For many sections, this is the only activity. Nationally there has been a dramatic increase in undergraduate participation at section meetings, and this raises the question of whether the nature of the meetings may be changing as a result.

Bill Fenton
Governor
wfenton@bellarmine.edu


KYMAA Teaching Award - Call for Nominations

Nominations for the Kentucky Section's 2010 Distinguished Teaching Award are now being accepted. The Kentucky Section Selection Committee will choose one of the nominees for the Section Award. The awardee will be honored at the KYMAA Annual Meeting in Spring 2010. The awardee will also be the official Kentucky Section candidate for the pool of teachers from which the national recipients of the MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics will be selected, although the committee does also consider direct nominations from MAA members. More information on the award, past winners, and nomination instructions can be found on the national MAA website at: http://www.maa.org/awards/haimo.html. Past winners of the KYMAA Distinguished Teaching Award can be found at: http://www.maa.org/kentucky/ (Click on the Service and Teaching Awards link.)

We urge you to submit a nomination of someone who is eligible and qualified in your department. Even if the nominee is not selected this year, it is an honor to be nominated. Your department will receive recognition for its commitment to excellence in teaching, and the work done in preparing a nomination folder for your candidate is not wasted, since your candidate can be nominated again in a future year. Self-nomination is not permitted.

Eligibility

  • College or university teachers assigned at least halftime during the academic year to teaching a mathematical science in a public or private college or university (from two-year college teaching through teaching at the Ph.D. level) in the United States or Canada. Those on approved leave (sabbatical or other) during the academic year in which they are nominated qualify if they fulfilled the requirements in the previous year.
  • At least five years teaching experience in a mathematical science.
  • Membership in the Mathematical Association of America.

Guidelines for Nomination
The nominees should:

  • be widely recognized as extraordinarily successful in their teaching*;
  • have teaching effectiveness that can be documented;
  • have had influence in their teaching beyond their own institutions**;
  • foster curiosity and generate excitement about mathematics in their students.

* "teaching" is to be interpreted in its broadest sense, not necessarily limited to classroom teaching (it may include activities such as preparing students for mathematical competitions at the college level--for example, the Putnam Prize Competition or the Mathematical Contest in Modeling--or attracting students to become majors in a mathematical science or to become Ph.D. candidates).

** "influence beyond their own institutions" can take many forms, including: demonstrated lasting impact on alumni; influence on the profession through curricular revisions in college mathematics teaching with national impact; influential, innovative books on the teaching of college mathematics; etc.

Nominations must include the appropriate "Evidence of Extraordinary Success in Teaching," the first page of which is the "Nomination Form." Please follow the instructions on that form precisely to assure uniformity in the selection process both at the Section and National level. The form and instructions can be obtained at the MAA website: http://www.maa.org/sections/teachingawards.htm or via the following links:  

Evidence of Extraordinary Success in Teaching (word)
Nomination Form (word)

If the Nomination Form is received by the Section Secretary by November 6, 2009, the Secretary will ask the nominee's Department Chair to work with the nominator in supplying the additional required materials. Ultimately, a complete nomination must also include Evidence of Success in Teaching as described on the back of the nomination form. Final deadline for receipt of all materials is December 1, 2009. If the file on the Section's awardee significantly exceeds the limits prescribed, it will not be considered for a national award and will be returned to the Section. Please send one copy of all materials to the Section Secretary (electronic submissions preferred):

Robert Hebble at robert.hebble@kysu.edu
Division of Mathematics and Science
Kentucky State University
400 East Main St.
Frankfort, KY 40601

We look forward to your participation in this exciting MAA venture of taking substantive action to honor extraordinarily successful teaching. We want to see such teaching recognized at all post-secondary school levels. We depend on you to help us identify those who merit such recognition.

This year the Teaching Award Committee members are


Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching

Henry L. Alder Award for Distingushed Teaching by
A BEGINNING COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY MATHEMATICS FACULTY MEMBER

In January 2003 the MAA established the Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member to honor beginning college or university faculty whose teaching has been extraordinarily successful and whose effectiveness in teaching undergraduate mathematics is shown to have influence beyond their own classrooms. An awardee must have taught full time in a mathematical science in the United States or Canada for at least two, but not more than seven, years since receiving the Ph.D. Each year at most three college or university teachers are to be honored with this national award and are to receive a $1,000 award and a certificate of recognition from the MAA. Award recipients will be expected to make a presentation at one of the national meetings of the MAA.

Nominations for the award may be made by any member of the MAA.

For more information, see http://www.maa.org/awards/alder_award.html. Note that this year, the deadline for nominations is October 1, 2009.


Call for KYMAA Nominations

This spring we will be holding elections for Vice-Chair and Newsletter Editor. All new officers will begin their terms at the Executive Committee Meeting immediately following the Annual Business Meeting in the spring. Both positions carry three-year terms.

If you have any questions about these positions, please feel free to contact the current people in these positions or read the "job descriptions" in our bylaws.

Please forward the name and affiliation of any Section member you would like to nominate for one of these offices to any member of the Nominating Committee. Self-nominations are entirely appropriate.

This year the members of the Nominating Committee are


The Annual KYMAA Meeting:
A Bluegrass Mathematics Extravaganza

Our 2010 KYMAA Annual Meeting will be held March 26-27, 2010 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.  Further information will appear on our 2010 Annual Meeting and 2010 Meeting Program pages in the coming months.

Some of the relevant dates and deadlines:

  • January 29, 2010 - Call for Contributed Papers in Winter Newsletter
  • February 24, 2010 - Deadline for Abstracts for Contributed Papers
  • March 8, 2010 - Publication of Meeting Program on KYMAA website
  • March 12, 2010 - Deadline for Meeting Registration
  • March 26 - 27, 2010 - Mathematics and Fun at the Annual Meeting!

There will be a Southeastern Sectional Meeting of the AMS on Saturday and Sunday 27 and 28 March of the same weekend. This meeting will feature a joint MAA AMS lecture by Bruce Resnick, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. The other invited lecturers for the AMS meeting are Percy Deift, Courant Institute, Irina Mitrea, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Bernd Ulrich, Purdue University. The AMS meeting will include the Erdos lecture given by Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University, on Saturday night. See http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2162_program.html for the full AMS program.

On Thursday March 25, David Eisenbud of the University of California, Berkeley will give the Hayden-Howard lecture in the Department of Mathematics at UK. The Hayden-Howard lecture is an annual invited lecture organized by the Department of Mathematics in honor of Tom Hayden and Henry Howard.

In spring 2011, Eastern Kentucky University will host the KYMAA Annual Meeting. Please contact any officer of KYMAA if you would be interested in hosting a future meeting.

Hey Students!

My name is Mike Dobranski, and I'm the Student Chapters Coordinator for the KYMAA. I hope your fall term is going well so far. If your institution does not have a student chapter or a math club, talk to your professors about starting one. Chapter or club meetings are a great place to share summer research experiences with other students and faculty. Here's a link to the MAA page with information on starting a student chapter at your school - http://www.maa.org/students/chapter_index.html.

Whether or not you have a chapter or club, there are several competitions you may want to attempt. The first competition is the Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Competition (VTRMC). You need to have a faculty member who is willing to register your institution and proctor the exam. Information is available from http://www.math.vt.edu/people/plinnell/Vtregional/. Institutional registration is due by Monday, September 28, 2009, and the competition will take place on Saturday, October 24, 2009 at your institution. The second competition is the Sixty-Ninth Annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Information is available from http://math.scu.edu/putnam/index.html. The faculty advisor needs to request a registration packet as soon as possible in order to return the registration materials by Tuesday, October 13, 2009. The competition will take place at your institution on Saturday, December 05, 2009.

The final competition that I'll mention is the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and the Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). These are competitions that run for an entire weekend. This year the competition starts on Thursday, February 18, 2010 and ends on Monday, February 22, 2010. This competition is for three-student teams. Your institution may have more than one team, but a student may be on only one team and each team works on only one problem. More information is available from http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/.

Students who are planning to go to graduate school in Fall 2010 should be preparing to apply. Application deadlines may be as early as November for the most competitive programs. Ask your professors for recommendation letters as soon as possible so they have time to write good letters. If you'll still be an undergraduate in the 2010-2011 school year, you should consider applying for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program for Summer 2010. I'll provide more information on REUs in an upcoming newsletter.

News from the Chapters

Centre College

reported by Marian Anton (marian.anton@centre.edu)

There are two new faculty members in the math program at Centre this year. Marian Anton and Joel Kilty join the program as Visiting Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor respectively. Marian received his BS and MS at the University of Bucharest (Romania) and his PhD at the University of Notre Dame in 1998. Joel received his MA and PhD from the University of Kentucky last spring.

Lesley Wiglesworth continues with Centre this year in a tenure-track position. Alex McAllister has returned from his research leave and has taken over the duties of Math Program Chair since last spring. Professor Emeritus Neil Eklund assumes a small teaching load this fall. Marian Anton is the new KYMAA liaison for Centre.

Last spring, eleven students were inducted into the Pi Mu Epsilon society. Also this society will support Professor Angela Spalsbury's visit at Centre as a Pi Mu Epsilon Richard A. Good National Lectureship speaker for this academic year. Professor Spalsbury is affiliated with Youngstown State University, OH. The student MAA club and the student chapter of AWM are planning joint activities.

In January, twenty-three students attended the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC. During this spring, six colloquia in mathematics were given by job candidates at Centre. Also there are two upcoming regional meetings of MAA and AMS hosted by the University of Kentucky in March 2010. Centre faculty members Marian Anton and Joel Kilty are organizing special sessions at the AMS meeting. Marian will (co)organize a special session on Homotopy Theory and Geometric Aspects of Algebraic Topology and Joel will (co)organize a special session on Function Theory, Harmonic Analysis, and Partial Differential Equations.

Georgetown College

reported by Homer White (Homer_White@georgetowncollege.edu)

The news from Georgetown College is that in May 2009 Professor Austin French retired after thirty-three years of service to the College.

Kentucky State University

reported by Andy Martin (andrew.martin@kysu.edu)

As the new MAA liaison for KSU I have the following news to report for the fall newsletter:

We welcome April Pilcher, who comes to us as a new Instructor in developmental mathematics. She has her MA in education , and is working on her PhD in interdisciplinary studies from UK.

We welcome back Karen Heavin. She too has her MA, and is working on her PhD in Math Education from UK.

We welcome back Fariba Nowrouzi-Kashan, now on tenure-track as an Assistant Professor. Her PhD is from UofL, and her specialties are statistics and data mining.

We welcomed Eungchun Cho back from his 2007-2008 sabbatical year in Korea.

At KSU the big math news of the year was our hosting of the KYMAA meeting in March. Major kudos to chief organizer Robert Hebble, who rode the resultant wave of goodwill to an electoral victory and is now Secretary of the KYMAA! Both Andy Martin and Eungchun Cho gave talks at the meeting.

Eungchun Cho presented a paper "Importance Variables" at the International Society of Ecological Informatics Biannual Meeting at Cancun, Mexico.

Sara Ellis has left her job as math coordinator at the Academic Center for Excellence (a tutoring center) to pursue a graduate math degree at UK. Karen Heavin continued a former AMSP initiative, and with funding from KSU's Office of Regional Stewardship, is now running a pilot for high school seniors to take College Algebra online at their high schools and earn joint high school/college credit if successful.

Fariba Nowrouzi-Kashan is coauthoring a book, "Applied Survival Data Mining in Health Outcomes Research" with Dr. Patricia Cerrito of the U of L. She also published an article "Risk of Re-Blocking an Artery after a Treatment as a Factor of Episode Grouping" at ISPOR, May 2009. She is also authoring a chapter of an e-Book. The title of the book is Casebook, and the title of the chapter is "Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular procedures".

Chris Russey co-presented a talk at the CPE Conference in Lexington in May. Other KSU attendees there were Fariba Bigdeli-Jahed, Fariba Kashan, Cathy Mania, and Andy Martin. Andy Martin gave a talk at the MAA-SE meeting at Belmont U. in Nashville in March.

Student News:

Seven math majors graduated: George Johnson, Ashley Kimbrough, Michael Lee Jr., Sheree McDonald, Andrew Preston, Robert Quarles, and Clarence Young Jr.

Sophomore Haddi Bayo had a summer research internship in the College of Pharmacy at UK, where she claimed she actually used some of the Calc III she had learned in the fall.

Virgil Barnard, a Calculus I student, presented his original research into the Collatz Conjecture to the faculty on September 11. (He was evidently unaware that Erdos had called this problem "hard" !) Although not a proof, it was a very interesting approach.

Morehead State University

reported by Kathy Lewis (k.lewis@moreheadstate.edu)

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Morehead State University has become the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics. Four Associate Professors of Physics are now part of the department faculty: Ignacio Birriel, Jennifer Birriel, Kent Price, and Capp Yess. Mike Dobranski and Tim O'Brien were granted tenure and promoted from Assistant to Associate Professors of Mathematics. Gerd Fricke, Professor of Mathematics, was chosen as the university's Distinguished Researcher this year.

Northern Kentucky University

reported by Steve Rankin (rankin@nku.edu)

Teri J. Murphy, Associate Professor with a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from the University of Illinois, joined the department in January, 2009. Michael Klembara, Associate Professor, has rejoined the department after a successful tenure of several years as director of International Programs at NKU.

Steve Wilkinson, Professor, has been selected to serve as the new chair of the department. Steve's PhD is from Rice University, and he has been at NKU since 1989.

Gail Mackin, Associate Professor, will serve as Assistant Chair for the department.

Dan Curtin, Professor, will continue to serve at the Interim Director of the Center for Integrative Science and Mathematics.(CINSAM) for the 2009/2010 academic year.

The Math and Statistics club has met, and members plan to read The Housekeeper and the Professor, as translated from the Japanese. This is a poignant story about families interwoven with a nice introduction to some of the concepts from number theory.

The department has added a new major in statistics for the 2009/2010 academic year. Information about the new major can be found at the departmental website: http://www.nku.edu/~math/index.php

The 2009 Sehnert Lecture: Soap Bubbles and Mathematics

Monday, October 12, 2009
7:30 p.m.
BP 200 Auditorium

Frank Morgan
Atwell Professor of Mathematics
Williams College

Frank Morgan studies optimal shapes and minimal surfaces. He has published 150 articles and six books, including "Calculus Lite" and "The Math Chat Book," based on his live, call-in TV show and column. He is the founder of the NSF "SMALL" Undergraduate Research Project, the inaugural winner of the Haimo national teaching award of the Mathematical Association of America, and a past Vice-President of the American Mathematical Society.

Soap bubbles continue to fascinate and confound mathematicians. The show will include demonstrations, explanations, and prizes. Public welcome, fifth graders and above.

For more information, please visit the departmental website.

Kentucky Department of Education funds NKU Partnership Project

Responding to recent measures of student performance in mathematics (which place Kentucky among the lower quartile), documented deficiencies in teachers' mathematical and pedagogical knowledge, and relatively few opportunities for teachers to develop their expertise in these areas, faculty from Northern Kentucky University Departments of Mathematics & Statistics and Teacher Education have partnered with teachers and administrators in 12 Northern Kentucky school districts to create the Northern Kentucky Mathematics Specialists Project (NKMSP). The three-year, project, funded by a $575,000 Mathematics & Science Partnership grant from the Kentucky Department of Education, will provide opportunities for elementary and middle grades teachers to develop content and pedagogical expertise through rigorous, job-embedded professional development. Highlights of the project include:

  • Three-week summer institutes, taught by teams of NKU faculty and acknowledged teacher leaders and providing participants with 12 graduate credits in mathematics content and pedagogy.
  • Collaborative action research projects, addressing recognized needs in each district and conducted by teams of teachers, administrators, and university faculty.
  • Monthly collegial meetings during academic year
  • Quarterly planning & assessment meetings

For more information about NKMSP, readers are invited to contact NKU faculty Ted Hodgson (Department of Mathematics & Statistics; 859.572.5328;hodgsont1@nku.edu) or Sara Eisenhardt (College of Education & Human Services; 859.572.1478; eisenhardts1@nku.edu).

 

Western Kentucky University

reported by Mark Robinson (mark.robinson@wku.edu)

We have two new tenure-track faculty this year. Vivian Moody (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an Associate Professor and Mikhail Khenner (Ph.D., Perm State University, Russia) is an Assistant Professor.

We also have four new visiting faculty this year. Leonardo Marazzi (Ph.D., Purdue University) and Jozsef Nemeth (Ph.D., University of Szeged) are Visiting Assistant Professors for the 2009-2010 academic year. Matthew Walsh (Ph.D., Auburn University) is a Visiting Assistant Professor for the Fall 2009 semester. Ji Li (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is a Visiting Instructor for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Dominic Lanphier has been promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. Ferhan Atici has been granted tenure.

Lan Nguyen will be on sabbatical leave during the Spring 2010 semester, and Barry Brunson begins Transitional Retirement this year after 26 years of service.

The 29th Annual Mathematics Symposium at Western Kentucky University will be on November 5 and 6, 2009.

The invited speakers are Jason Brown (Dalhousie University), whose work relating mathematics and music has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and other publications, and Brian Evans (University of Alabama).

The theme of the Symposium is "Mathematical Musings on Mathematics and Music!", but any talks on mathematics and related topics are welcome!

The deadline for submitting an abstract is October 30, 2009. The participation is free. We have funds available for student travel. More information can be found at www.mathsymposium.com.

West Kentucky Community & Technical College

reported by Rhonda Adkins (Rhonda.Adkins@kctcs.edu)

Gary Goodaker of Princeton, KY was promoted from Associate Professor of Mathematics to Professor of Mathematics at West Kentucky Community & Technical College in Paducah, KY (effective July 1, 2009). Gary has been employed at this campus since August 1997. He is also currently serving as Program Coordinator of Mathematics.