Fall 2004 Newsletter

From the Chair	Call for KYMAA Nominations
From the Chair-Elect	The FIRST-EVER TRI-Section Meeting !!
From the Student Chapters Coordinator	The Annual KYMAA Meeting
The Governor's Corner	KYMAA Visiting Lecturer Program
KYMAA Teaching Award
Henry L. Adler Teaching Award	News from the Chapters!!!

From the Chair

In these first few weeks of the semester, I have been struck several times by the connections between complex analysis and other subjects within mathematics. Roots of unity reminded me of cyclic groups; the Riemann sphere of the one-point compactification from topology; the inversion mapping 1/z of hyperbolic geometry. These reminders brought home the unity of mathematics, the fact that we work in one vast discipline with interconnections everywhere.

Do our students see this, I wonder? I certainly did not as an undergraduate. To me at that time, mathematics was a collection of largely disjoint topics — most of them fascinating, to be sure, but only occasionally did one course resonate in another. How many of us as we teach point out connections to other courses, to applications beyond our special interests? In what ways could we promote this broader vision of mathematics? I don’t have the answers, but I think this is an issue all of us should bear in mind.

An exciting event coming soon is the Tri-Section Meeting of the Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky Sections on November 5-6, 2004. This will be at the University of Evansville, a beautiful campus centrally located for our three regions. The featured speakers will be Brian Confrey, director of the American Institute of Mathematics, and Ron Graham, president of the M.A.A. In addition, Woody Dudley will reprise his famous trisectors talk for the event. The deadline for abstracts and registration is October 8, and I encourage you to participate.

Again this year I urge everyone to consider nominating a colleague for the Kentucky Section's 2004 Distinguished Teaching Award. (Department chairs, this means you in particular!) For many of us, teaching is the heart and focus of our profession. Yet there is the curious privacy of teaching, that once we enter our classrooms, few of our colleagues know what goes on there. We should celebrate the dedicated and innovative work that constitutes excellent teaching. The Distinguished Teaching Award is a great way to do so. December 1 is the official deadline for submitting applications; more details can be found at KYMAA Teaching Award later on in this newsletter.

Bill Fenton at wfenton@bellarmine.edu
KYMAA Chair

From the Chair-Elect

Steve Newman from Northern Kentucky University will continue our tradition of presenting an invited address as our 2004 winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award. On Friday afternoon John Kiltinen from Northern Michigan University will conduct a workshop on Permutation Puzzles and Groups. I am still working on lining up the other invited speakers. I have decided that I don’t really have to consider speakers only from schools called “Northern State University”. A large part of the program consists of short talks contributed by professors and students just like you. I urge you to consider sharing with the rest of us some of the mathematical ideas that you are thinking about.

Come to Morehead in the spring. It’s going to be a great meeting.

John Wilson at wilson@centre.edu
KYMAA Chair-Elect

From the Student Chapters Coordinator

At the 2004 meeting, Murray State University took first prize at the poster session of math and computer science clubs activities. Begin taking pictures and preparing descriptions of your activities. Clubs can prepare self standing poster boards three feet in height and four feet in width to exhibit during the meeting or they can prepare 8 1/2 by 11 entries to be displayed on easels provided by MSU. Students gave six presentations at the 2004 meeting. Begin recruiting presenters to surpass this number at the 2005 meeting. Student presenters will have a choice of a free one-year subscription to the Mathematical Association of America, which includes a monthly publication of the student's choice, or a book.

If you don't have an active club at your institution, recruit a few interested students, hold a meeting and begin brainstorming ideas for activities. Here are some activities that math/CS clubs: movie nights, pizza parties, invited speakers, fun problems, interview a professor, invite an alumni, sponsor a problem solving competition, a bowling night, intramural basketball, intramural soccer, celebrate pi day, celebrate math awareness month, organize to attend the KY Section Meeting. If you have any questions about MAA math clubs or student participation at the meeting, please contact me.

Dora Cardenas Ahmadi at d.ahmadi@moreheadstate.edu
KYMAA Student Chapters Coordinator

The Governor's Corner

The US Math Olympiad Team finished 2nd in the recent competition with 5 gold and 1 silver medals. Watch for an article on this achievement in Math Horizon magazine. Membership in the MAA continues to grow with total membership reported at 21,619. This includes 1,794 new members reported so far this year. Approximately 582 institutions hold institutional membership. The possibility of an associate membership is being studied in an effort to attract more of our colleagues from the community colleges.

The MAA continues to enjoy solid financial footing. The financial status was reported using a “7-7-7-7” descriptor meaning that, the MAA has roughly a 7 million operating budget, 7 million in real estate holdings, 7 million in grants, and 7 million in endowments. This illustrates considerable growth over last year when the financial status was being described by Treasurer John Kenelly using the “6-6-6-6” descriptor.

MAA book sales grew at 18% over the previous year with books now available on Amazon.com as well as the MAA Website. The top selling MAA book is Math for Business Decisions by Richard Thompson, while Classroom Resources accounted for 34% of the book revenues. Plan now to review all of the new MAA books at the book exhibit during the spring meeting at Morehead State University on April 1-2, 2005.

Plans are being discussed for the MAA’s Centennial year in 2015 with a major capital campaign being planned.

The previous two Study Tours to London and Greece were successful with the next tour tour scheduled to Mexico in May 2005. See the MAA website for details.

Watch for the call for nominations for MAA officers as the positions of President-Elect and 1st and 2nd Vice President will be filled in the spring.

The Project NExT program continues to grow and receive very favorable publicity. Seventy one new Project NExT Fellows were announced for 2004-2005 at MathFest2004 which is the 11th class of this nationally recognized professional development effort in mathematics. This brings to a total of 766 Fellows since the inception of the project. Nineteen of the 29 MAA Sections have developed Section NExT programs themselves. External support continues to come from Exxon Mobile while 9 other organizations (TI, NCTM, etc.) are also making significant contributions.

Several awards were approved by the BOG. Recipients will be announced at the January Joint Meetings in Atlanta where the MAA will offer child care services for the first time for attending members. In addition, the Professional Enhancement Programs of the MAA, PREP, offered 18 workshops on a variety of subjects during 2003-2004 and more than 400 of our members participated. Watch for details on the upcoming year’s workshops.

The Association continues to rely heavily on volunteers to serve on the over 100 committees in the organization. As Governor I can submit nominations and would be happy to do so for anyone who is interested in serving. All nominations are forwarded to the Committee on Committees who make the final recommendations with the Chair of the Coordinating Council. A listing of the committees can be found on the MAA website. I encourage you to consider to becoming more active in all levels of our Association.

As a final thought, I encourage all MAA members to become familiar with the recent publication CUPM Curriculum Guide for 2004. There is a two page executive summary available to the 97 page publication. CUPM Guide 2004 attempts to offer recommendations to mathematicians and departments of mathematics to guide in designing curricula for their undergraduate students. The guide calls on mathematicians and mathematics departments to “rethink the full range of their undergraduate curriculum and co-curriculum to ensure the best possible mathematical education for all their students, from liberal arts students taking just one course to students majoring in the mathematical sciences I hope it will become a frequent topic of our departmental discussions.” It would be difficult to think of an activity more important to the future of our profession.

Rodger Hammons at r.hammons@moreheadstate.edu
KYMAA Governor

KYMAA Teaching Award - Call for Nominations

Top Five Reasons for Not Making a Nomination and How to Dodge Them:

1. Everyone in my department is such a good teacher; I can’t possibly choose just one.
   Solutions: Nominate everyone, or take turns nominating each other.
2. My dog ate the nomination packet.
   Solution: Who needs a dog anyway?
3. I’m the best teacher I’ve ever met; how could I nominate anyone else?
   Solutions: Pay someone to nominate you, or Have your nomination ghost written.
4. All I ever needed to know about teaching I learned from my cat.
   Solution: Nominate your cat!
5. I’m sure there are plenty of nominations already.
   Solution: This is Kentucky! Let’s make it a real horserace!

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.

** "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 (html)
  Nomination Form (html)

• Evidence of Extraordinary Success in Teaching (latex)
  Nomination Form (latex)

• Evidence of Extraordinary Success in Teaching (pdf)
  Nomination Form (pdf)

• Evidence of Extraordinary Success in Teaching (postscript)
  Nomination Form (postscript)

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

• Daylene Zielinski at dzielinski@bellarmine.edu
  Department of Mathematics
  Bellarmine University
  2001 Newburg Road
  Louisville, KY 40205

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, 2005, 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.

The committee to choose this year's distinguished teacher for KYMAA will be announced soon. For now, questions and nominations can be directed to Daylene Zielinski at dzielinski@bellarmine.edu.

Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching

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 extra ordinarily 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.

Call for KYMAA Nominations

If you have any questions about these positions, please feel free to contact the current people in these positions:

• Chair-Elect: John Wilson at wilson@centre.edu,
• Governor: Rodger Hammons at r.hammons@modeheadstate.edu.

• soon; until this committee is settled, nominations may be sent to Bill Fenton, KYMAA Chair, at wfenton@bellarmine.edu
  

The First-Ever TRI-Section Meeting

Currently, the meeting organizers are soliciting presentations for the meeting. Presentations are normally 15 to 25 minutes in length, but longer presentations may be able to be accommodated. The presentations should be of interest to a broad audience and the meeting website has some suggested guidelines. The deadline for abstracts for contributed presentations is October 8th.

Lots of information can be found at the following websites:

• The meeting website is linked to: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~rader/INMAA/
• The call for papers: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~rader/INMAA/meetings/Fall04/callfall04.html
• Meeting logistics: http://math.evansville.edu/MAAFall2004.htm
• An invitation to participate in Project NEXT-IN: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/%7Elangley/NExT-IN/announcement

The Annual KYMAA Meeting

Some of the relevant dates and deadlines:

• February 1, 2005 - Call for Contributed Papers in Winter Newsletter
• February 28, 2005 - Deadline for Abstracts for Contributed Papers
• March 15, 2005 - Deadline for Meeting Registration
• April 1-2, 2005 - Mathematics and Fun at the Annual Meeting!

Our schedule of hosts for future section meetings is:

Fall 2004	University of Evansville
Spring 2005	Morehead State University
Spring 2006	Centre College
Spring 2007	Northern Kentucky University
Spring 2008	your school name here???

Please contact any officer of KYMAA if you would interested in hosting a future meeting - we're particularly interested in soliciting a host for the 2008 KYMAA Annual Meeting.

KYMAA Visiting Lecturer Program

Lectures are undergraduate accessible, but not necessarily freshman/sophomore accessible (talks are designated as accessible to high school students). Being listed does not obligate a speaker to accept invitations, but participants are willing to travel within a reasonable radius of their home institutions. Participants do 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.

We are still looking for speakers to include on our list of visiting lecturers; those interested in being visiting lecturers should e-mail their information to either: Kathryn Lewis of Morehead State University at k.lewis@moreheadstate.edu or Daylene Zielinski of Bellarmine University at dzielinski@bellarmine.edu. Please send them 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.

News from the Chapters

Marian Robbins has left Bellarmine for sunny California. She has taken a position at California Polytechnic Sate University in San Luis Obispo, joining an active research group in operator theory. Eduard Chiru has come to Bellarmine from Indiana University as a visiting assistant professor. Daylene Zielinski has received tenure and been promoted to associate professor. John Oppelt, who last year retired from the provost position at Bellarmine, received an award from the Bellarmine Alumni Association for distinguished service to the institution. Bill Fenton has returned to the Mathematics Department after a semester as acting dean of Arts & Sciences. Our student chapter is taking a trip to the science museum in Evansville to visit the exhibit on optical illusions.

Campbellsiville University reported by Chris Bullock: ctbullock@campbellsville.edu

Dr. Janet Miller is on sabbatical this semester. She is studying the problem of the gap between K-12 mathematics and postsecondary mathematics that students often face.

Centre College reported by John Wilson: wilson@centre.edu

After 30 years of service, Neil Eklund retired in the spring of 2004. He is looking forward to having more time for traveling and bird watching. This fall he is teaching BC calculus to a small group of Boyle County High School students.

Anne Collins has been hired in the tenure-track position created by Neil’s retirement. Anne is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bowling Green State University. She received a Master’s degree in physics from Northwestern University and a Masters and Ph.D. in mathematics from Duke. For the last two years she has worked in a postdoctoral position at Stanford University where she has been primarily interested in developing compact representations of shapes which allow for fast recognition and classification of objects. The temporary position André Wehner held in the math and physics program for the past three years has been converted to a tenure-track position. After a national search, André was hired to fill the position.

Bill Johnston was promoted to the rank of Professor. He has also agreed to serve another three-year term as the Associate Dean of the College. Ken Dutch has agreed to stay on another three years at Centre while Bill continues with his administrative duties. Alex McAllister has been awarded tenure at the college and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. John Wilson received one of the college’s Kirk awards for excellence in teaching last year. He was also named as a recipient of one of the first H. W. Stodghill Jr. and Adele H. Stodghill endowed professorships.

Cumberland College reported by Jonathan Ramey: jramey@cumberlandcollege.edu

Dr. Reid Davis has joined the department as Associate Professor of Mathematics. Dr. Davis has a Ph.D. from University of Tennessee. In addition, Dr. John Hymo, Professor of Mathematics, is the new Chair of the Department of Mathematics & Physics. Finally, we have two retirements: Dr. Lolan Redden, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Department Chair, has retired after serving at Cumberland College from 1981-1986 and 1988-2004, and Ms. Jennifer Sexton, Associate Professor of Mathematics has retired after serving at Cumberland College from 1980-2004.

Eastern Kentucky University reported by Pat Costello: pat.costello@eku.edu

There have been a few changes in the faculty since the beginning of last year. Dirk Schlingmann was hired as the new Chair of the department. Dirk received a Masters degree from the University of Illinois, a Diploma from the University of Bonn, and his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin. Dirk was chair of the mathematics department at Bethany College in West Virginia and enjoys all forms of music. Ron Pierce has complete the 3-year retirement transition program and is fully retired (but still teaching part-time for the department). Ann Bailey (MS in 1976 from EKU) has accepted a full-time Lecturer position.

Mathew Cropper received the 2004 EKU College of Arts and Sciences Research Award.

Anthony Hilton, Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Reading (UK), will be joining the department for Spring 2005. He has accepted the Vernon Wilson Endowed Chair position and will be teaching a graph theory seminar and helping to organize the departmental symposium. His special interests include latin squares and edge-colorings of graphs.

Most of the MAA Student Chapter activities have been in conjunction with the KME chapter. There was a fall picnic and a White Elephant Christmas party. The monthly meetings included talks on "How Many Roots Does a Polynomial Really Have?" and "Sliding Puzzles."

Georgetown College reported by Homer White: Homer_White@georgetowncollege.edu

William Harris is on sabbatical this year: he is a Visiting Teaching Fellow in the Mathematics Department at Cornell University. Gareth Bendall and Kathy Pinzon are visiting this year. Gareth recently acquired his Ph.D. from U.K. in combinatorial optimization, and Kathy is completing her dissertation on algebra.

Morehead State University reported by Kathryn M. Lewis: k.lewis@morehead-st.edu

Three members of the Morehead State University Department of Mathematics and Computer Science faculty were selected as Project NExT fellows for 2004-2005: Mike Dobranski, Maureen Doyle, and Tim O’Brien. Two of those faculty members completed the work to earn their Ph.D. degrees during the past year: Mike Dobranski (mathematics, University of Kentucky) and Maureen Doyle (scientific computing and computational mathematics, Stanford University).

In September 2003, the department was awarded a Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Scholarships (CSEMS) grant by the National Science Foundation. The award is for approximately $400,000 over a period of four years. The grant provides scholarships to recruit and retain students majoring in mathematics or computer science who are academically talented and demonstrate financial need; the scholarship recipients also receive mentoring and have access to support services to help them succeed in completing a degree and starting a career.

The Math and Computer Science Club at Morehead State University kicked off the year with a picnic, which was well attended. Computer science majors in the club plan to hold a Computer Repair Shop or "Stump the Geek Nights". All club members plan to participate in several activities this year, including creating a t-shirt, holding fundraising events, organizing a mentoring system for incoming first-year students, and tutoring middle school students.

Murray State University reported by Renee Fister: renee.fister@murraystate.edu

Our new faculty are Wyatt Alverson who received an M.S. in mathematics from Murray State University, Ken MacPherson who received an M.S. in mathematics with an emphasis in geosciences from Murray State University, and Shelle Patterson who received an M.S. from Baylor University. David Roach has received tenure and promotion to associate professor. Wayne Bell has moved to half-time retirement. He served Murray State for 27 years.

This year has been quite eventful for the Euclidean Math Club (EMC). To kick off the new academic year, the Euclidean Math Club held the first meeting Sept. 8 in Faculty Hall. We had a home-made ping pong table and other various games and food items which helped make for a fun-filled evening. The annual cook-out was held the first week of October. Students and faculty played volleyball, horseshoes, and croquet as the grills were fired up and hamburgers and hot dogs cooked. Later that month, the EMC sponsored a Halloween party.

On December 3, 2003 the annual joint Math Club and Pi Mu Epsilon Banquet was held at Ryan's Steak House. Dr. Roach, who was the guest speaker for the night, talked about wavelets and their various advantages over jpegs and other forms of picture files. Most importantly, he answered the question, "What is the Matrix?" The first event of the spring semester was the bowling challenge versus physics students in mid-February. Towards the end of March, the Nth (N=6) Annual Calcutta Lottery took place in connection with the NCAA College Basketball tournament.

Northern Kentucky University reported by Kirsten Fleming: flemingk@nku.edu

The new faculty at Northern Kentucky University are:

• Barbara Phillips, Lecturer, with a Masters from College of Mt. St. Joseph,
• Michael Traina, Lecturer/Retention Specialist, with an MBA from Baldwin-Wallace College,
• Traian Truta, Assistant Professor of Computer Information Technology, with a Ph.D. from Wayne State University,
• Jeff Ward, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, with a Ph.D. from Ohio State University,
• Michael Waters, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education, with a Ph.D. from Ohio University.

The James “Duke” Sehnert Memorial Lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 at 7:30pm in the Otto Budig Theater (University Center). Robert V. Hogg will speak on The Importance of Understanding Variation For more information go to: http://www.nku.edu/~longa/dept/sehnertlecture/2004/

Owensboro Technical and Community College reported by Karin Chess: karin.chess@kctcs.edu

Last year Karin Chess was promoted to professor and both Missie Jones and Jeannette Ward were promoted to associate professor. In addition, Kathy Mowers will be on leave for the calendar years 2006 and 2007 to assume her duties as President of the American Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges (AMATYC).

Somerset Community College reported by Roger Angevine: roger.angevine@kctcs.edu

Last year we had one promotion, David Behrman to Associate Professor, and two new full time faculty for this year, Roger Osborne and Martha Deitz. One faculty member has announced retirement at year’s end, Don Brashear.

University of Kentucky reported by Carl Lee: lee@ms.uky.edu

We welcome Richard Millman as a new Professor in the department. He fills our new position in Mathematics Outreach, comes to us having served as the President of Knox College, Galesburg, IL, 1998-2001, and as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation, 2002-2004. His mathematical research is in the area of differential geometry. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Rich's hire was supported in part by AMSP, the Appalachian Mathematics and Science Partnership, and he will be working with AMSP and other outreach projects to mathematics teachers.

Visiting Faculty:

• Youngjoon Cha, Visiting Scholar, AY 2004-05, numerical analysis, Sejoing University.
• Sergey Kitaev, Visiting Assistant Professor, Fall 2004, discrete mathematics, Ph.D. Goteborg Universitet.
• Siu-Hung Tang, Visiting Assistant Professor, AY 2004-05, partial differential equations, Ph.D. Purdue University.
• Peihao Zhao, Visiting Scholar, October 2004-September 2005, partial differential equations, Lanzhou University.

Recent Retirements include Raymond H. Cox after 40 years and 9 months of service, and James H. Wells afer 41 years and 9 months of service. Richard Carey has begun a four-year term as Chair of the Department.

The Department of Mathematics continues its participation in several major mathematics education outreach projects: AMSP (the Appalachian Mathematics Science Partnership), http://www.appalmath.org, and ACCLAIM (the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics), http://www.acclaim-math.org.

AMSP involves 51 school districts and nine higher education partners in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Hundreds of K-12 teachers participated in summer institutes and are now in the process of implementing their materials in the classroom. We continue to revise mathematics and science courses for pre-service teachers at the institutions of higher education.

ACCLAIM involves six higher education partners in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia. A first cohort of 13 doctoral students in mathematics education just completed their third summer of study, while a new cohort of 18 students finished their first summer together. Both cohorts are taking courses online during the academic year.

Thanks to the efforts of Professor Robert Molzon, UK has established a new degree in Mathematical Economics two years ago that now has 40 students enrolled in it.

The Mathematical Economics major offers students a degree program that combines mathematics, statistics, and economics. In today's increasingly complicated international business world, a strong preparation in the fundamentals of both economics and mathematics is crucial to success. This degree program is designed to prepare a student to go directly into the business world with skills that are in high demand or to go on to graduate study in economics or finance. A degree in Mathematical Economics would, for example, prepare a student for the beginning of a career in operations research or actuarial science.

In many ways, the Mathematical Economics program parallels the engineering philosophy. It combines the quantitative methods of mathematics with an applied science in order to solve real problems. As an example, operations research is used to optimize costs for extremely complicated systems such as airline scheduling. A major problem in business and economics is decision making under uncertainty. Efficient inventory control for large national retail chains can mean the difference between success and failure. A business will improve its bottom line if it can effectively control cost of inventory under the uncertainty of consumer demand. The solution of control problems of this type requires knowledge of relatively sophisticated mathematics and statistics as well as knowledge of basic economic principles. There is currently a serious shortage of individuals who have sufficient training in mathematics and statistics as well as an understanding of business and economics. Companies that employ operations research analysts or actuaries cannot fill their positions. Mathematical Economics and related areas have often been referred to as engineering for the service sector or "financial engineering." With the ever increasing importance of the service sector in our economy, the Math-Econ degree will prove to be a valuable asset. The program will give the student an opportunity to study a fascinating collection of ideas and it will also provide the student with very marketable skills.

University of Louisville reported by Wiley Williams: williams@erdos.math.louisville.edu

Our new faculty this year include: Professor Yongzhi Steve Xu with a Ph.D. from the Univ. of Delaware in partial differential equations, applied mathematics and modeling; Visiting Assistant Professor Milton Nash with a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in number theory; and Visiting Assistant Professor Iwona Pawlikowska with a Ph.D. from Silesian University Katowice Poland in functional equations and financial mathematics.

George Barnes was promoted from Associate Professor to Professor and Ewa Kubicka was promoted from Associate Professor to Professor and is now serving as our Internship Director. In addition, Manabendra Das now serves as Undergraduate Director, Robert Powers took on the job of Assistant Chair, and Thomas Riedel was appointed Department Chair.

Robert McFadden retired after 15 years of service to the department. Kevin Clancey left the University to become Executive Editor of Mathematical Reviews. Inessa Levi left the University to become Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Illinois University.

The 2004 Bullitt Lecture in Mathematics entitled "Heart Attacks can give you Mathematics" was delivered by James Keener from the University of Utah. For news about current events please see the department web page at http://www.math.louisville.edu/news/. In addition, the first year of the NSF-funded Groundwork Education in Mathematics and Science (GEMS) grant has begun. It provides fellowships to 12 (mostly graduate) mathematics and science students to serve as content resources to teachers in local schools. For more information about this program visit http://www.math.louisville.edu/gems.

Western Kentucky University reported by Mark Robinson: mark.robinson@wku.edu

New tenure-track Assistant Professors this year are:

• David Benko with a Ph.D. from the University of South Florida,
• Dominic Lanphier with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota,
• Heather Russell with a Ph.D. from Harvard University,
• Peter Sepanski with a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Sherrie Serros has been granted tenure. Bettina Richmond is on sabbatical leave during the 2004-2005 academic year. The following faculty have started full-time retirement: Joe Stokes (after 42 years of service) and Steve Jacobs (after 40 years of service). Dr. Stokes is continuing to teach for the department on a part-time basis.

The 24th annual WKU Mathematics Symposium will be held November 19-20, 2004. The theme is Elegant Mathematics: Discrete, Continuous, and Everything in Between. Invited speakers are Jack Robertson from Washington State University and Martin Bohner from the University of Missouri-Rolla. This year we again will have funds available through MAA NSF-RUMC (NSF Grant DMS-0241090) to support student travel and lodging. The call for papers and more information is available at http://www.wku.edu/~ferhan.atici/symp04.html

WKU will be hosting the Southeastern Section meeting of the American Mathematical Society on March 18-19, 2005. Invited speakers are Bennett Chow from the University of California, San Diego, Robert McCann from the University of Toronto, and M. Susan Montgomery from the University of Southern California.