The Mathematical Association of America Maryland-District of Columbia-Virginia Section

The Spring 2025 Meeting of the MD-DC-VA section of the MAA will be held at George Mason University on April 11-12, 2025.

On Friday, Rebin Muhammad of Montgomery College will run the workshop: Integrating 3D Printing into Mathematics Classroom: A Hands-On Workshop. That evening, Bud Boman of Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg and Robert Rogers of SUNY Fredonia will give the banquet address, We Integrate Differentials, Not Functions. The Saturday morning address, Beading and Folding and Sewing, Oh My! An Adventure in the Marvelous Land of Map Coloring, will be given by Eve Torrence of Randolph-Macon College, and the Saturday afternoon address, Fishes Go MOO: investigating an interesting convergence in fish biomechanics through math modeling, will be given by Nicholas Battista of The College of New Jersey.

Conference Links

• Registration
• Call for Talks
• Student Activity Registration
• Teaching Exchange Sign-up
• Hotels
• Contacts

Note: If you want to purchase meals, make sure to register by Friday, March 28. After that, you can still register for the conference but not purchase meals. The call for papers and student activity registration is open until April 4.

COMMIT (COMmunity for Mathematics Inquiry in Teaching) is hosting a Teaching Exchange on Saturday as part of the programming for the Spring 2025 MD-DC-VA MAA Section Meeting. The Teaching Exchange is designed as a venue for faculty presenters to share their “good ideas” of things they do in the classroom with participants in a fun and engaging setting. The session is set up as a “speed dating” round where a small group of participants will spend ~8 minutes talking to a presenter, and then participants will rotate to a new presenter. Presenters will repeat the mini-discussion/presentation for about five groups of participants, depending on the number of participants. After the mini-presentations, there will be a chance for participants to go back to speak further with the presenters. No formal presentation is required, we just request that presenters prepare just a single sheet handout to give the participants that summarizes the ideas they are planning to discuss or additional information for participants to refer to later. Use this Google form to sign up.

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Rebin Muhammad

Montgomery College

Friday workshop: Integrating 3D Printing into Mathematics Classroom: A Hands-On Workshop

Abstract: This interactive workshop explores practical approaches to teaching mathematical concepts through 3D printing technology. Drawing from classroom implementations and student projects, participants will learn how to transform abstract mathematical ideas into tangible learning tools using freely available educational resources. The session will showcase applications including Riemann sums, volumes of revolution, centroids, parametric equations, and infinite series representations and others.

Participants will gain hands-on experience with Desmos, Fusion 360 (educational license), and CalcPlot3D to create and modify mathematical models. The applications extend beyond calculus to courses such as pre-calculus and linear algebra, making this approach adaptable across various levels of mathematical instruction. Using modern, user-friendly, and cost-effective 3D printing technology (Bambu Lab), Math educators will discover how to integrate maker technology into their curriculum—regardless of prior experience with 3D printing or coding. A live 3D printing demonstration will be conducted during the workshop using a Bamboo 3D printer.

Resources: Project Repository: GitHub - 3D Print Calculus
Student Work Gallery: Calculus 3D Print Gallery

Biographical Sketch: Dr. Rebin Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Montgomery College, where he has been a faculty member since August 2020. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Ohio University and previously taught at Salahaddin University-Erbil (SUE) and Soran University (SU) in Kurdistan, Iraq.

Dr. Muhammad is dedicated to fostering an equitable, inclusive, and engaging learning environment. His teaching philosophy incorporates evidence-based practices such as Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and Standards-Based Grading (SBG) to enhance student understanding and engagement. His current work focuses on bridging mathematical concepts with hands-on learning experiences, integrating 3D printing technology, developing interactive web-based applications, and designing activities that make mathematics more accessible and tangible. Beyond academia, Dr. Muhammad is also interested in Islamic geometric art, chess, mountain biking, and hiking. Personal website: https://rebinmuhammad.com/

About MD-DC-VA COMMIT: The MD-DC-VA COMMIT was formed in early 2016 (the group was originally called the MD-DC-VA IBL Consortium) as a network of college math instructors with a common interest in teaching and learning using inquiry. We recognize that teaching with inquiry can look very different in different contexts, and view our role as supporting instructors in utilizing the version that works for them and their students. Names that have been used for teaching with inquiry include: ambitious teaching, project-based learning, complex instruction, inquiry-oriented learning, discovery learning, inquiry-based learning, and student-centered teaching. We welcome members who are new to teaching with inquiry as well as those who are more experienced. Please join us! See the MD-DC-VA COMMIT webpage and the COMMIT Network webpage for more.

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Eugene Boman & Robert Rogers

Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg \& SUNY Fredonia

Banquet Address:We Integrate Differentials, Not Functions

Abstract: The standard approach to teaching integration begins with a rigorous definition featuring limits of Riemann sums. This is curious considering that the notation ∫ y dx developed by Leibniz (1675) predates Cauchy's and Riemann's formulation of integration (1823) by nearly 150 years. The ideas of summing infinitesimals and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus are even older. We propose that starting an Integral Calculus course by defining the integral as the limit of Riemann sums is not only historically inaccurate -- Riemann used his sums to investigate integrability conditions -- but more importantly it is pedagogically unsound. Rigor has its place for sure, but its place is not at the beginning of the course where it hinders students' use of integration as a problem-solving tool. We will provide examples, problems, and approaches which will demonstrate the power of integrating differentials to solve (not necessarily calculus) problems. It will also provide motivation for the study of power series and ultimately numerical series and sequences as approximation techniques. Rather than treating these as a separate topic, which is often the norm, they can serve to begin the “crossover” into the abstraction and rigor of Riemann sums and power series.

Biographical Sketch: Robert Rogers is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus at SUNY Fredonia. He received his BS in Mathematics with Certification in Secondary Education from SUNY - Buffalo State, his MS in Mathematics from Syracuse University, and his PhD in Mathematics from the University at Buffalo. He is a past president of the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State and a former chair and governor of the Mathematical Association of America Seaway Section. He is a former editor of the New York State Mathematics Teachers' Journal and is an MAA – Seaway Section Distinguished Lecturer. He is a recipient of the SUNY Fredonia President's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the MAA Seaway Section's Clarence Stephens Award for Teaching Excellence. He is a recipient of the MAA Distinguished Service Award – Seaway Section and is a member of the New York State Mathematics Educators' Hall of Fame. He is a coauthor with Dr. Eugene Boman of the open-source textbooks How We Got from There to Here: A Story of Real Analysis and Differential Calculus: From Practice to Theory. They are currently working on an open-source integral calculus book.

Eugene Boman is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the Harrisburg campus of the Pennsylvania State University. With Robert Rogers (SUNY, Fredonia) he has written, two mathematics textbooks: Differential Calculus: From Practice to Theory (2023), and How We Got From There to Here: A Story of Real Analysis (2014). In 2008 he won the Carl B. Allendorfer Award for excellence in expository mathematical writing from the editors of Mathematics Magazine for the article “Mom! There's an Astroid in My Closet” (Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 80 (2007), pp. 247-273).

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Eve Torrence

Randolph-Macon College

Saturday Morning Address:Beading and Folding and Sewing, Oh My! An Adventure in the Marvelous Land of Map Coloring

Abstract: The Famous 4-color Theorem states that four colors are sufficient to color any map on a plane or sphere so that regions sharing a boundary line are different colors. The less well-known Map Coloring Theorem gives a formula for the number of colors needed for a map drawn on a torus with one or more holes. Visualizing such maps is quite difficult. Over the past several years I have been trying to understand maps on these surfaces by constructing models in various media. I have published directions for these models so you can learn how to make your own!

Biographical Sketch: Eve Torrence is professor emeritus at Randolph-Macon College where she taught from 1994 to 2021. She is the author of Cut and Assemble Icosahedra: Twelve models in White and Color and co-author with her husband and fellow mathematician, Bruce Torrence, of The Student's Introduction to Mathematica. She has served as the chair of the Maryland-DC-Virginia Section of the MAA and President of Pi Mu Epsilon Mathematics Honor Society. Eve is currently a member of the Bridges Organization Board and has served as a Proceedings editor for seven Bridges conferences. She is currently working on a book on topological crochet with Shiying Dong.

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Battista, Nicholas

The College of New Jersey

Saturday Afternoon Address:Fishes Go MOO: investigating an interesting convergence in fish biomechanics through math modeling

Abstract: Most fish swim by undulating their body and caudal (rear) fin. This is called body-caudal fin (BCF) swimming and has been historically used to a priori classify fish into four discrete locomotive modes. However, a recent study by Di Santo et al. 2021 observed an interesting convergence in swimming kinematics across a diversity of fishes. Their results suggest a unifying mechanism to generate efficient aquatic propulsion. In this talk, I'll describe how mathematical modeling can be used to holistically explore the swimming performance of fish exhibiting the BCF mode. This story will take us through building a math model, computational fluid dynamics, model validation, machine learning, and multi-objective optimization. Ultimately, we were able to identify performance trade-offs and redundancies along Pareto-optimal fronts, in addition to probing why such a convergence in kinematics may exist during steady swimming.