Fall 2000 Newsletter

From the Chair The Annual KYMAA Meeting
KYMAA Teaching Award The Governor's Corner
KYMAA Visiting Lecturer Program WKU Annual Math Symposium
Call for KYMAA Nominations News from the Chapters

From the Chair

Thanks to Eastern Kentucky University: A well-deserved thank you to Amy King and the faculty of Eastern Kentucky University for hosting an excellent meeting last spring. They were gracious to our invited speakers and us. The dulcimer recital at Saturday evening's Aftermath was unique and especially charming. It was nice to see the large number of students in attendance at the meeting.

Distinguished Teaching Award: So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don't have to teach. Never. Excerpt from "'Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!' Adventures of a Curious Character" by Richard Feynman, Bantam Books: New York, 1986.

It has been said that a teacher affects eternity and can never tell where his or her influence stops. On a more local level, each of us as teachers gain satisfaction from those moments when one of our students overcome an obstacle to understanding and arrive at that point where they proclaim, "Aha, now I see the solution."

Besides a teacher's individual successes with students, being honored by peers must rank high in one's professional career. With this in mind, we call for nominations for the Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching. If you know of someone who is a truly dedicated and outstanding teacher, you should nominate that person for the award. The nomination form and guidelines appears below in KYMAA Teaching Award. We ask that nominations be submitted by November 17th.

Nominations: At the next annual meeting, we will hold elections for three officers: Chair-Elect, Vice-Chair (3 years), and Student Chapters Coordinator (3 years). Please let one of the section officers know if you would like to suggest someone. For more information see Call for KYMAA Nominations below.

Newsletter Editor: Welcome to Alex McAllister of Centre College as our new newsletter editor. We look forward to his creative leadership as our newsletter is transformed into an electronic format. A link to the website for our electronic newsletter can be found by visiting: http://www.maa.org/kentucky

University of Kentucky: Our next section meeting will be held April 6 - 7, 2001 at the University of Kentucky. Soon there will be a webpage for the meeting with information on proposal deadlines, registration, hotels, and directions to the University of Kentucky. Dave Shannon, our chair-elect, from Transylvania University, has more about the meeting below at: The Annual KYMAA Meeting.

Have a great year and I look forward to seeing you in April in Lexington on the University of Kentucky campus.

Ray Tennant
KYMAA Chair


KYMAA Teaching Award - Call for Nominations

Nominations for the tenth (2001) Kentucky Section Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics 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 Spring 2001 meeting of the section and will be widely recognized and acknowledged within the Section. The award will also be the official Section candidate for the pool of Section awardees from which the national recipients for the MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics will be selected (though one of the national winners may be selected from another source). There will be at most three national awardees, each of whom will be honored at the National MAA meeting in January 2000 and receive a $1,000 check and certificate.

We urge you to submit a nomination if you have someone eligible and qualified in your department. Even if not selected this year, it is an honor for someone to have been 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 be submitted on 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 via the following:

If the Nomination Form is received by the Section Secretary by November 17, 2000, 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 15, 2000. 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:
Professor Karin Chess
Department of Mathematics
Owensboro Community College
4800 New Hartford Road
Owensboro, KY 42303

The Section Selection Committee will select the Section awardee during December and January and communicate its selection to the National Selection Committee no later than February 1, so that the National Committee can then make its selections.

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.


KYMAA Visiting Lecture Program - Call for Participants

We would like to start a visiting lecture program for KYMAA. We will compile and publish (electronically and possibly hard-copy also) a list of those willing to give visiting lectures, the titles of those lectures, a short bio of the speaker, and contact information. We are also interested in submissions from those who would be willing to speak at high schools.

Lectures should be undergraduate accessible, but not necessarily freshman/sophomore accessible (please indicate which talks are accessible to high school students). Being listed does not obligate a speaker to accept invitations, but participants should be willing to travel within a reasonable radius of their home institutions. Participants should not require or expect an honorarium from the host institution. However, the host institution is expected to take full responsibility for making all arrangements directly with the speaker, covering all travel expenses, publicizing the event, and acting as a host throughout the speaker's visit.

Those interested in being visiting lecturers should email their information to either: Dr. Kathryn Lewis of Morehead State University at k.lewis@morehead-st.edu or Dr. Daylene Zielinski of Bellarmine University at dzielinski@bellarmine.edu by December 11th. Please send us the following information:

  • Name as you wish it to appear,
  • Title and Institution,
  • Contact Information including: address, phone, email, fax, url,
  • A short professional bio that gives some idea of your expertise; please limit your bio to a maximum of 150 words,
  • Titles of lectures you are interested in giving; please indicate which talks are accessible to high school students.
Thank you for your interest and participation. We hope to distribute the list at or before the Annual KYMMA meeeting at the University of Kentucky in March.


Call for KYMAA Nominations

The terms of our current Chair-Elect, Vice-Chair, and Student Programs Coordinator will be expiring this spring, so we are seeking nominations for candidates for these offices. If you have any questions about these positions, please feel free to contact any of the current officers (see KYMAA Officers). In brief, the duties of each include:
  • Chair-Elect -- organizes program of annual meeting (initial 2 years) and becomes Chair for the following 2 years;
  • Vice-Chair -- conducts survey and MAA booksale at annual meeting (3-year term);
  • Student Programs Coordinator -- plans annual meeting events for students (3-year term).
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:

Elections will be held at the KYMAA Annual Spring Meeting, but we are hoping to collect nominations as soon as possible.


The Annual KYMAA Meeting

Our schedule of hosts for future section meetings is:
2001 University of Kentucky
2002 Georgetown College

Please contact any officer of KYMAA if you would interested in hosting a future meeting, we're always on the look out for a good meeting site. The following schools have already expressed an interest in hosting a future meeting:

  • Bellarmine College
  • Murray State University


The Governor's Corner

The Board of Governors met in Los Angeles on Tuesday, August 2nd prior to the annual summer "Mathfest" conference. Following are the major items that were considered:

Financial: A large portion of our meeting time was devoted to hearing reports, discussion, and taking action on financial matters of the Association. Recently the MAA came through a period of economic hard times, but now the budget situation is much better. This improvement is mainly due to two factors which, at first glance, seem to be in conflict.

  1. Due to the financial situation some of the services provided by the national office were eliminated.
  2. The MAA's total membership is on an uphill swing. As of June 1, 2000, individual membership is 7.5% higher than this time last year (totaling 24,047) and 37 institution members were added.
The revenue remains too heavily dependent on membership dues. In order to provide the programs, products, and services that are expected by its members, having a more diversified revenue stream is a high priority of the MAA. New initiatives are: increasing contributions to MAA by individuals and foundations, increasing income from grants, and increasing revenue from services and products.

Also, MAA is in the process of acquiring an Association Management Software package with plans to have full implementation in summer 2001. The software is centered on a relational database and contains special packages for membership, meetings, accounting, e-commerce, fundraising, administration and governance. Since the management software will allow MAA to perform many services which are currently outsourced, it should provide substantial savings over the long haul.

New Services: The MAA has received funding from an NSF grant for a program of grant-writing workshops. This service is to be offered to Sections as mini-courses or workshops at Section Meetings. Also MAA (with Math Forum) was awarded a grant from the NSF to initiate a Digital Library service. The MathDL will be an on-line resource and a directory of materials, hard copy and electronic, in undergraduate mathematics.

Articulation: This past spring Bernie Madison (Ph.D. Univ. of Ky. and currently Dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Arkansas ) chaired a Task Force to study issues relating to articulation and/or transition from high school to college and from 2-year to 4-year colleges. During the 2001 calendar year he will join the MAA headquarters staff as a visiting mathematician to continue work on this project. Other issues under study are admission and placement testing, changes in algebraic skills, and the role of mathematics departments in decisions about college credit for courses taken in high school.

Project NExT: There were over 100 applicants and 71 were chosen as Fellows for the 2000-2001 year. The Fellows are from 19 Sections of the 29 Sections but none from KySec this year. The total number of Fellows now stands at 488.

Guidelines for Programs/Departments: The Task Force to Review the "Guidelines for Programs and Departments in the Mathematical Sciences" presented a set of revised guidelines which were approved, with minor revisions, by the Board. The new document, which replaces the 1993 MAA Guidelines document, will be disseminated to all undergraduate departments in the mathematical sciences.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like additional information on any of these items or if you have concerns you would like for me to bring to the attention of the MAA through the Board of Governors.

Don Bennett
KYMAA Governor


WKU Annual Mathematics Symposium

Western Kentucky University will hold its 20th Annual Mathematics Symposium on November 17-18, 2000. The theme will be MATHEMATICS OF AN UNBELIEVABLE NATURE.

We are happy to have two distinguished keynote speakers:

  • Calvin T. Long of Washington State University will speak on:
    • The Fascinating Fibonacci Sequence at 8:00 p.m. CDT on Friday, November 17,
    • Generalizations of Moessner's Theorem: An Exercise in Guessing Some Combinatorial Results that are Hardly Believable at 8:30 a.m. CDT on Saturday, November 18.
  • Doug Hardin of Vanderbilt University will speak on
    • The Fractal Pizza Parlor Problem at 11:30 a.m. CDT on Saturday, November 18.
There will be sessions of 20 minute contributed talks on Friday night and Saturday morning. The deadline for abstracts is October 20. Please talk this up with your colleagues; we need some interesting talks that match our theme.

For more information and a print-out-able poster, check out the meeting webpage at: http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Academic/Ogden/Math/Symp.html or contact: Tom Richmond, Department of Mathematics, Western Kentucky University, 1 Big Red Way, Bowling Green, KY 42101, phone: 270-745-6219, fax: 270-745-6219, e-mail: Tom.Richmond@wku.edu.


News from the Chapters

BEREA COLLEGE reported by JP Lee:jp_lee@berea.edu
Joining the faculty this year are:
Bob Powers, Assistant Professor, Ph.D. from VPI in Applied Mathematics, with interests in: optimal consumptionin di-equilibria, complex pricing dynamics, Distributed Parameter Systems, Modeling and Control of an Aeroelastic System, Modeling of Vibration of Flexible Beams, and Parameter Estimation for a Volterra Integro- Differential Equations, and
Li-Ing Lynn Wu, Assistant Professor, Ph.D. from Purdue, with interests in: Differential Equations, Dynamic Systems, and Mathematical Biology.

Also, Professor Larry Grunwald has retired; he began teaching at Berea College in 1967.


CENTRE COLLEGE reported by John Wilson:wilson@centre.edu
We have no new faculty members this year but we do welcome Christine Shannon back into full time teaching in math and computer science after a three year stint as the Chair of the Math and Science Division. Bill Johnston has been selected as the new chairman of the math program. Alex McAllister was elected last spring as the editor for this newsletter of the Kentucky section of the MAA. Dorothy Nelms retired last year after 30 years on the math faculty. John Wilson has been named as the Elizabeth Dowling Associate Professor of Mathematics and will be on sabbatical leave during the winter and spring terms of 2001.

The MAA student chapter is very active this fall. There is a colloquium series planned with fall talks by math faculty members Bill Johnston and Neil Eklund and alumnus Brian Smith who is a statitician at Eli Lilly. We also plan to have a career information session, an evening of pizza and problems, and the annual math versus chemistry croquet match.


EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY reported by Margaret Yoder:margaret.yoder@eku.edu
Hello from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of Eastern Kentucky University! We are getting used to our new name and department size. As of July 1st, 2000, we are no longer the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science and there is a separate Department of Computer Science.

In addition to our new name, many of us have new responsibilities and/or titles. Dr. Ken Nelson is serving as our Acting Chair. Sue Cain is now the University Developmental Coordinator, not only the Developmental Mathematics Coordinator. Margaret Yoder is serving as Mathematics Service Coordinator. Dr. Kirk Jones has been promoted to Associate Professor. Dr. Ken Nelson, Dr. Ray Tennant, and Dr. Margaret Yoder have earned tenure. Dr. Patti Costello is taking a one-year leave of absence.

Several of our Visiting Instructors have finished their terms here at EKU. These include Kaye Black, Ruth Simms, Fereja Tahir, and Kazem Kashef. Some have gone to other positions and others have returned as part-time faculty members. Dr. Vivian Camerlengo is our newest tenure-track faculty member. She earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from the University of Florida in 1982. Among her experiences, she was an invited Visiting Scholar in Mathematics/Mathematics Education at Harvard University ('92 - '95). She is an Associate Professor and will be concentrating on improving our developmental program.

We have two new Visiting Assistant Professors, Dr. Matt Cropper and Dr. Onecia Gibson. Dr. Cropper earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from West Virginia University in 1998. Dr. Gibson earned her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Kentucky in 1996.

Our student chapter of KME is very active. It is led by Dr. Pat Costello, who is in his final year of a 4-year term as president of the national organization of KME. Many of our KME student members will be attending the national convention at Washburn University in Topeka, KS.

We're getting ready for the visit of Dr. John Paulos, author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. He will be speaking here at Eastern Kentucky University on November 8, 2000 as part of EKU's Millennium Series of lectures. The lecture is at 7 p.m. in the Adams Room of the Wallace Building. Paulos is an internationally known mathematician, the monthly mathematics columnist for ABCNews.com and a member of the Philadelphia Daily News. His talk will be based on his book "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper," and will be supplemented with more topical stories and writings from his professional experiences.

Many of us are involved in the PT3 Grant to enhance the technological literacy of our teaching majors. We are working with the College of Education to integrate technology into both education courses and subject area courses which are taken by pre-service teachers.


GEORGETOWN COLLEGE reported by Will Harris:wharris@georgetowncollege.edu
Homer White received tenure and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Also, Ann Heard retired after 19 years of service to Georgetown College.

Our student MAA chapter co-hosted (with the student ACM chapter) a cookout in September. Events scheduled for the remainder of the year include a talk on graduate school in mathematics and related fields, a career forum, and a pizza party/movie night.


KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY reported by Robert Hebble:rhebble@gwmail.kysu.edu
We only have a few changes in the department at KSU. Dr. Robert L. Hebble was hired as an Assistant Professor for the Division of Mathematics and Sciences. He received his PhD. in mathematics in 1997 from the University of Kentucky. Also, Dr. David Adams has retired. He served the Division of Mathematics and Sciences at KSU for 22 years.


MOREHEAD STATE UNIVERSITY reported by Gordon Nolen:g.nolen@morehead-st.edu
The department of Mathematical Sciences welcomes two new faculty members and would like to say goodbye to three others. Patty Hardin and Richard Blanton have joined our faculty as fixed-term members. We would like to wish Karen Heavin, Dr. Robert Hebble, and Dr. Thomas Klein good luck in their new endeavors. Dr. Johnnie Fryman and Sue Beck will be returning on fixed-term contracts. Dr. Fryman retired from our department, finished four years in our early retirement program, and is now teaching on a fixed-term contract. Dr. Robert Lindahl retired three years ago with twenty-seven years of service and will be finishing his fourth year of early retirement this semester.

Dr. Kathy Lewis, an assistant professor at MSU, attended the 6th Conference for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS6) from June 28 through June 30 at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference included several invited talks, three tutorials, and a graduate student poster session. Dr. Lewis was one of the invited speakers, and the title of her talk was "Toeplitz Operators and Hyponormality".

Dr. Dora Ahmadi and Dr. Kathy Lewis, assistant professors at MSU, attended the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Mathfest from August 3 through August 5 at UCLA. The conference included invited addresses, special sessions, contributed paper sessions, and other activities. During the session "Mathematics Day: A Tool in Teaching, Guiding, and Encouraging Students in Mathematics", Dr. Ahmadi and Dr. Lewis gave a presentation entitled "Mathematics, Physics, and Advanced Technology Exploration Day".


MURRAY STATE UNIVERSITY reported by Bob Pervine:bpervine@gauss.mursuky.edu
Joining the faculty this year are:
Michael Ackerman, Ph.D from the University of Memphis, with intersts in: graph theory,
Chris Mecklin, Ph.D from the University of Northern Colorado, with interests in: applied statistics,
Kelly Pearson, Ph.D from the University of Oregon, with interests in: algebraic geometry,
David Roach, Ph.D from Vanderbilt University and a two-year post doc at Georgia, with interests in: wavelet analysis, and
Tan Zhang, Ph.D from the University of Oregon, with interests in: differential geometry.

Nick Britt recently retired after 34 years of service. Also, Maeve McCarthy received an NSF EPSCoR grant to study two-dimensional inverse spectral problems.


NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY reported by Lisa Elderbrock:elderbrockl@nku.edu
Joining the faculty this year are:
Andrew Long, Assistant Professor, with his PhD from University of Arizona and most recently held a post-doc in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan, and
Phillip Schmidt, Director of Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics (CINSAM), comes to NKU from University of Akron, where he was chair of the department of mathematics.

In addition, Gina Foletta has been promoted to Associate Professor. Thomas Kearns is Interim Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Gail Wells is Dean of the College of Arts and Science. Kristin Pfabe is now teaching at Nebraska Wesleyan. Joe Smith (29 years) and Bart Braden (29 years) have retired. Dan Curtin organized The Midwest History of Mathematics Conference, which was held Oct. 13-14 at NKU.


PADUCAH COMMUNITY COLLEGE reported by Jackie Blagg:Jackie.Blagg@kctcs.net
Mike Stewart has changed from teaching mathematics to teaching information technology. Paducah CC will be hiring a full-time mathematics faculty for January 2001.


SAINT CATHERINE COLLEGE reported by Sr. Ann F. Leonard:aleonard@sccky.edu
Sr. Ann F. Leonard is on sabbatical until August 1, 2001.


UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY reported by Carl Lee:lee@ms.uky.edu
There's a lot going on at UK and I can probably do no better myself than to give you this website: http://www.ms.uky.edu/~math/Info/Newsletter/perspectives00.html


WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY reported by Mark Robinson:Mark.Robinson@wku.edu
Joining the faculty this year are:
Karen Gramling, Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University. Karen has been an Instructor at WKU for several years, has just completed her Ph.D. degree at Vanderbilt and now joins the tenure-track faculty as an Assistant Professor. Sherrie Serros, Ph.D. at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, joins our math education group this year. She previously taught at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville.

Wanda Weidemann has been promoted from Associate Professor to Professor. Lyn Miller has been granted tenure. Daniel Biles is on sabbatical leave during the fall semester of 2000.

WKU's 20th Annual Mathematics Symposium will be held November 17 and 18, 2000 (see WKU Math Symposium above). This year's theme is Mathematics of an Unbelievable Nature. The keynote speakers are Calvin T. Long of Washington State University and Doug Hardin of Vanderbilt University. Dr. Long will speak on "The Fascinating Fibonacci Sequence" and will present some combinatorial results that are hardly believable in "Generalizations of Moessner's Theorem: An Exercise in Guessing". Dr. Hardin will present "The Fractal Pizza Parlor Problem". Several contributed talks by other speakers will also be given. All talks will be at a level accessible to a broad range of backgrounds and interests.