The
main event in the Section each year is the Annual Meeting in the
Spring. This year the meeting will take place at Alma College on
April 29 and 30. The program committee, co-chaired by John Fink and
Mark Naber, has put together what looks like an outstanding program
for the meeting; you can read all about it elsewhere in this
Newsletter. [See online information.]
In order to encourage attendance at the meeting and to
help establish a pattern of attendance, the Section is making a
special effort this year to encourage new members to attend. In the
next few weeks the national MAA office will be sending each new member
of the Section a special invitation to attend the meeting, along with
a coupon that will waive the registration fee for those who are new to
the Michigan Section this year. The 2006 meeting will be held at
Calvin College in Grand Rapids and the 2007 meeting will be held at
the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Ideally the location should
alternate between the east and west sides of the state, but a central
location (like Alma) is also convenient.
One of my official duties and privileges as chair of the Section is to participate in the Upper Peninsula Regional Meeting of the Michigan Section. This year the meeting was held at Lake Superior State University in Sault Sainte Marie, October 8 and 9, and was organized by Brian Snyder, Sherilyn Duesing, and George Voutsadakis. Driving to the meeting this Fall reminded me of how beautiful our state is but also reminded me of how wrong those of us on the Lower Peninsula are when we think of Alma as being “centrally located” in the state. I appreciate the special efforts of so many of our UP colleagues to attend the Annual Meeting and applaud their efforts to organize a regional meeting of their own.
The third meeting sponsored by the Section each year is the Michigan Undergraduate Mathematics Conference. This meeting has a relatively short history, but it is evolving into one the highlights of the year for the Section. This past Fall the meeting was held at Central Michigan University and was organized by Sivaram Narayan, Ken Smith, Lisa DeMeyer, and Yury Ionin. The next MUMC will be held at the University of Michigan-Flint. You can find more details elsewhere in this Newsletter. Randy Pruim, who serves as Student Activities Coordinator for the Section, is responsible for finding a location for the meeting each year.
I hope to see you in Alma this April.
Gerard Venema, Chair