What an odd and uneasy time this is. The last 6 months have seen almost every part of our lives turned upside-down. Americans are feeling worried and on-edge. We may feel exhausted, overworked, isolated. But we are not alone! Fundamentally, I think of our Section as a place of fellowship, and this community is important now more than ever.

Indeed, among the many, many disappointments of this past spring, was the fact that our annual face-to-face Section meeting was canceled. (This was a small sacrifice, all things considered, but then we know that small things have a way of adding up!) I have been attending the spring meetings since 2010, and I know many of you have much longer streaks. A lot of us really look forward to that time each year as a chance to reconnect with colleagues and friends.

Understandably, everyone wants to know about the 2021 meetings, and the Executive Committee is currently working to find a way for us to hold our annual meeting safely. While we do not have all the details yet about exactly what this would look like, it may well prove necessary to hold a virtual meeting this year. If you have opinions or expertise to offer regarding the upcoming meeting, or would like to be involved in some way, please contact me! I would like to hear from you.

On a related topic, we are currently working on a plan to hold a virtual small-scale "mini-meeting," over Zoom or something similar, late this fall. We have in mind just a few parallel sessions, probably on a Saturday morning. I imagine that a number of you have research or classroom experiences that you'd like to present, and there have not been many presentation venues recently, so this could relieve a bit of the pressure. Also, we hope this experience can serve as a test-run and provide lessons that would apply to a larger-scale virtual meeting in April, should that prove necessary. You can contact me or Kyle Riley (SD School of Mines), if you would like to be a part of something like this.

I do have some happy and exciting news to report. First, I would like to recognize Dr. Molly Moran (Colorado College), the winner of the 2020 Early Career Teaching Award. Her application was truly a pleasure to read, and the award committee was thrilled to honor such a worthy candidate. Thank you also to Dr. Andrea Bruder for nominating Dr. Moran! I'd strongly encourage everyone to please consider nominating your colleagues for either the ECTA or the Burton W. Jones Teaching Award. It is important to recognize our colleagues for their outstanding achievements.

Also, on this topic: as discussed at our Business Meeting over Zoom from this past spring, the requirements for the Early Career Teaching Award have been changed, so a PhD is no longer required. We believe that this will allow us to recognize talented and dedicated teachers in our Section. Thank you very much to the committee members who worked on this proposal.

And of course, thank you to everyone who works on behalf of the Section. Thank you to each of our Coordinators and Committee members. And thank you and welcome to Tracii Friedman (Colorado Mesa University), who has just taken over as MAA National Representative.

Thanks very much to our Past Chair, Alexander Hulpke (Colorado State University). Your insight and thoughtfulness have been immensely helpful to me as I have moved into this role. And to all of my past and present colleagues on the Executive Committee: thank you, thank you, thank you. It is a pleasure to work with each of you, and your hard work is noticed and appreciated.

To all of you reading this, who make the Section what it is, thank you very much. I am proud to be a part of this group. I look forward to seeing you in April, in whatever form that may take, and I wish you the very best in 2021, and beyond.

Sincerely,

Dan Swenson
Black Hills State University
Chair, Rocky Mountain Section

We continue to be very active with undergraduate research and having students actively engaged in academic competitions. We had student teams that participated in the Putnam, the MCM, and two data analysis competitions in Minnesota. We also completed a large renovation of our bachelor’s degree and the new program will be starting this fall. We recently learned that Kyle Caudle and Karen Braman were part of a research team that was granted an NSF grant that will start soon.

Lastly, many veterans of the profession will recognize that hiring a new President regularly brings new branding and marketing materials for the university. Our official name according to the state remains South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, but our new branding has embarked on the use of South Dakota Mines, a copy of the new logo is included below. We look forward to seeing everyone in our future meetings in whatever form they may take.

The Mines' Applied Mathematics and Statistics department is happy to introduce and welcome our new postdoctoral fellows.

Hannah Director, NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow, PhD University of Washington: Hannah Director's research focuses on space and space-time data, Bayesian methods, and improving statistical methods used in climate science. Director will be working with Professor Doug Nychka.

Kalila Sawyer, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow PhD University of Kentucky: Kalila Sawyer is a Tropical Geometer whose focus is on using tableaux and other combinatorial objects to calculate certain bounds on invariants of certain algebraic curves. Sawyer comes to Mines from the University of Kentucky, where she completed her doctoral studies.

Athena Sparks, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, PhD University of Colorado: Athena Sparks completed her PhD at CU Boulder in algebra and computability theory. Her thesis was on the number of clonoids and their applications to the computational complexity of Promise Constraint Satisfaction Problems. Sparks is also interested in developing innovative uses of technology for undergraduate education.

STUDENT AWARDS

Leah Reeder (Computational & Applied Mathematics) and Aidan Dykstal (Statistics) received the 2019-2020 Outstanding Graduating Senior Award. Mines' AMS department presented Outstanding Graduating Senior Awards to two students in recognition of their academic excellence and their service to the department, university and community.

William Schenken received the 2019–2020 Ryan Sayers Memorial Award. The Ryan Sayers Memorial Award recognizes the outstanding academic achievements of a graduating student, majoring in engineering physics and/or applied mathematics and statistics, who has performed significant undergraduate research.

Griffin Hampton received the 2019–2020 Ryan Sayers Memorial Scholarship. The Ryan Sayers Memorial Award recognizes the outstanding academic achievements of a graduating student, majoring in engineering physics and/or applied mathematics and statistics, who has performed significant undergraduate research.

Adam Stansbury received the 2019–2020 E-days Engineer Award. This award is given to one senior from each department who truly exemplified what it means to be a committed student, an outstanding Oredigger, and a valuable member of the Mines community.

Rathana Preap received the 2020 AMS Honors Fund to Honor Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award. This award recognizes and honors Carol Job and Sharon McAuliffe, both of whom put a tremendous amount of effort into supporting students who struggled in their initial coursework or student life at Mines and ultimately became successful students due to the effort and attention of caring faculty. Recipients of this award are recognized for their ability to persevere through personal and/or academic adversity and ultimately succeed at the Colorado School of Mines.

Amit Rotem was the recipient of the 2020 Professor Everett Award in Mathematics. The Award is given to a senior who demonstrates scholarship, leadership, community service and potential for the innovative application of mathematics to mineral engineering.

Leah Reeder received the Waltman Award. The William D. Waltman, 1899, Award is presented to the graduating senior whose conduct and scholarship have been most nearly perfect and who has most nearly approached the recognized characteristics of an American gentleman and/or lady during the recipient's entire collegiate career.

AMS Graduate Teaching Fellow Dave Montgomery is the 2020 recipient of the Graduate Teaching Award that is given annually to the graduate student who has shown the greatest effectiveness as a teacher of undergraduate mathematics or statistics courses.

David Kozak was the 2020 recipient of the Graduate Research Award that is presented annually to a graduate student for excellence in research prior to the completion of their PhD thesis, recognizing the research's original contribution to knowledge in the field and/or the student's exceptional collaboration with a research team.

FACULTY AWARDS

Karin Leiderman Gregg, Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, was awarded an Excellence in Research award for Junior Faculty. This award recognizes faculty with fewer than 10 years of self-directed research for their outstanding accomplishments.

Karin Leiderman Gregg and Cecilia Dinizook Behn were honored for mentoring graduate students through the creation of the Mathematical Biology Research Group (MBRG), which provides a safe space in which students learn about new ideas, talk about mathematics research and hone their professional communication skills.

FACULTY PROMOTION

Three members of the Mines Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department were promoted from Teaching Associate Professor to Teaching Professor this past spring:

• Terry Bridgman

  

• Holly Eklund

  

• Jennifer Strong

FACULTY GRANTS

• Soutir Bandyopadhyay: NREL "Solar Resource Gap-filling and Forecasting."
• Cecilia Dinia Behn: Boston University "Pilot study to test cognitive and emotional problems associated with pediatric hypersomnia conditions."
• Karin Leiderman: NIH "An integrated computational and experimental approach to understanding the hemostatic response during treatment of bleeding."
• Jennifer Ryan: Air Force Research Lab "Multi-Scale Higher Order Methods for Underresolved Simulations Useful in Turbulence Modelling."

OTHER NEWS

Recent Mines graduate, Leah Reeder, was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Reeder will be studying computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford University.

Over the summer, our faculty began to prepare for Remote Synchronous Instruction (RSI). At PPCC, this teaching modality currently requires each math instructor to conduct at least 50% of their course via WebEx or Zoom during regularly scheduled call periods. Our faculty and instructors helped develop and conduct another round of workshops and used D2L to make a wide range of online teaching and technology resources available to our instructors. During the fall term, the Math Department has 196 sections being taught via RSI, and many are being conducted 100% synchronously.

This fall the Math Department is also supporting a PPCC initiative designed to provide additional flexibility to our students during these turbulent times. Six faculty are piloting twelve Hyflex classes—a teaching modality that enables the students to choose between in-person, remote, and online instruction throughout the course. Working in close coordination with our eLearning department, our IT experts, and our High Impact Practice leads, this team is leading the way in experimenting with and implementing this new type of course at PPCC. Initial student response is very positive, and we plan to expand our Hyflex offerings fourfold in Spring 2021. We look forward to comparing student outcomes and satisfaction with our RSI and online courses.

It has been a challenging year, but the commitment and dedication of our faculty and instructors continues to result in the realization of PPCC’s vision: Students succeed at PPCC!

Jeff Joles
Assoc. Dean of Mathematics

The Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching honors 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. National MAA has granted Dr. Ken Monks, Front Range Community College (Boulder Campus), an Alder Award for 2020. Dr. Monks' citation reads:

Dr. Monks' love for mathematics is a family tradition. He shares his lifelong love of math as an inspirational teacher who will go to extraordinary lengths to help students achieve great things. Always eager to explore new ways of engaging students, he asks his students to take risks. Students in his Differential Equations/Linear Algebra course collaborate on homework using a free shared-editing cloud platform for LaTeX documents called Overleaf. He has authored open-source calculus texts and develops group projects for his courses in which students present in mini-conference format. A particularly unique addition to his curriculum is the use of history of mathematics to add context to the material. At the invitation of the PIs of the NSF-funded TRansforming Instruction in Undergraduate Mathematics Education via Primary Historical Sources (TRIUMPHS) project, Dr. Monks has authored three "primary source projects" (PSPs) that offer students the general benefits of inquiry-based learning within this unique historical approach. These time- intensive approaches truly stretch students outside their traditional math comfort zone.

Outside the classroom, Dr. Monks adds to the overall community of FRCC and beyond. He coordinates the math lab, the Putnam club, master teacher awards, and faculty senate, as well as presenting at various academic conferences. The Putnam students have done remarkably well for freshman and sophomore level students, with a team score in the top third nationally in 2019, competing against four-year schools. Along with his family of mathematicians, they offer a summer math camp (Prove it! Math Academy) for high school students. They teach students to transition from computation-based questions to proof-based questions used in math competitions such as USA(J)MO and USAMTS. In addition, he stays busy with his research program and duties as president of the Colorado Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges. Having been recognized with teaching awards at his institution and in his MAA section, we believe Dr. Kenneth M Monks' dedication to the teaching and learning of mathematics deserves full consideration for the Alder Award

The Burton W. Jones Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics
and
The Early Career Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Mathematical Sciences

Nomination forms should reach Section Awards Coordinator by December 15 of each year. Forms are included later in this newsletter. Complete nomination materials should reach Awards Coordinator by January 15 of each year.

The Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA is very pleased to announce that the 2020 recipient of the Early Career Teaching Award is Dr. Molly Moran, of Colorado College.

Dr. Moran's nomination truly demonstrates that she is an outstanding and dedicated teacher. By all accounts, she shines in the classroom, finding innovative ways to help students learn. Along with her deep subject knowledge and her thoughtful approach to the art of teaching, students and peers report that Dr. Moran displays a passion for her subject and a profound commitment to inclusivity in mathematics. Dr. Moran also has an impressive record of mentoring undergraduates in research: her students have presented at venues such as the Joint Meetings in Mathematics, and they describe this experience as "eye-opening" and "life- changing." (Some of these students have since gone on to graduate study in mathematics.) It was a pleasure for the committee to hear about the wonderful work she is doing.

We congratulate Dr. Moran on her exemplary service to her students, her institution, her section, and her discipline. We know that we will continue to see great things from her in the years to come.

This award includes a personalized plaque, and a check in the amount of 100⋅ϵ dollars (rounded to the nearest cent).

To be eligible the candidate must:

• Hold a doctorate or master's degree

• Be college or university teachers who have held a full-time faculty appointment in a college department of mathematical sciences in the Rocky Mountain Section for at least two, but not more than seven, years since receiving their degree doctorate. A nominee who has just started the eighth year of teaching at the time of the application is still eligible for the award. If a nominee has held their his or her doctorate degree for more than seven years, then the nominator must indicate on the nomination form the times that the nominee was not teaching. Common exceptions to the seven 7-year limit are maternity, paternity, family, or medical leaves. Sabbaticals and postdoctoral fellowships are exceptions only if they involved no teaching and the application does not include accomplishments made during these times.

• Hold membership in the Mathematical Association of America

Our spring election was delayed until September due to the coronavirus. Congratulations to Mona Mocanasu, who was re-elected as Secretary/Treasurer, and to Ken Monks, who was elected vice-chair. Thanks to everyone who voted!

The nominating committee is now soliciting nominations for the important position of section chair for an election to be held in late spring 2021 (two-year term, usually this office is filled by the preceding year's Chairperson-Elect). Nominations can be sent to Nathaniel Miller, nominating committee chair, at nathaniel.miller@unco.edu. Self-nominations are encouraged .

Duties of the Chair include:

Roughly a month before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 75 students, faculty and other mathematical enthusiasts came together on Saturday, February 22, 2020 for an exciting day of mathematics at the 17 th Annual PPRUMC. Hosted by Colorado State University-Pueblo, the site of the very first-ever PPRUMC in 2004, this year's event attracted 50 undergraduate student participants with representation from 9 different schools.

Dr. Katie Morrison, University of Northern Colorado, opened Saturday's program with her Keynote Address: "Graphs, Neural Networks, and Emergent Dynamics in the Brain". Her lively introduction to some of the neuroscience phenomena informing her research set the tone for the remainder of this one-day conference, which also featured 14 contributed talks presented by a total of 15 undergraduate mathematics students. (A complete list of presenters and their talk titles appears below.)

The program also included a conference luncheon, followed by a panel presentation entitled "What Next? Beyond the Undergraduate Mathematics Major" was held. Panelists Graham Harper (CSU - Fort Collins), Kaitlyn Martinez (Colorado School of Mines), Cole Mcgee (Booz Allen Hamilton) and Capt. Dawn Sanderson (USAFA) shared their personal experiences working within various professional and educational settings, along with advice concerning graduate school and career opportunities in mathematics and their enthusiasm!

This year's conference was again offered at no cost to participants, thanks to generous funding from the MAA Rocky Mountain Section, CSU-Pueblo (Department of Mathematics and Physics and the Office of Admissions), Colorado College (Department of Mathematics), the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (Department of Mathematics), and private donations. CSU-Pueblo's Dr. Paul Chacon again donated framed fractal images to the collection of door prizes awarded at the closing ceremony, with additional door prizes provided by the Rocky Mountain Section and various campus offices at CSU- Pueblo. The PPRUMC Steering Committee is also grateful to the local organizing committee ( Janet Heine Barnett, Rick Kreminski and Frank Zizza), Joleen Ryan (Administrative Assistant, CSU-PuebloDepartment of Mathematics) and to all the faculty who contributed their time and expertise to preparing student presenters, recruiting student participants and moderating sessions.

PPRUMC Contributed Presentations:

• Jared Bressler, Colorado State University–Pueblo
  Least Square Regression with Bounded Missing Data
• Ryan Chen, United States Air Force Academy
  The Game of "Destroy the Graph"
• Samuel Cho, United States Air Force Academy
  The Basics of Sylver Coinage and Numerical Semigroups
• Staci Davis, United States Air Force Academy
  The Game of Sylver Coinage
• Tatiana Finley, Colorado State University-Pueblo
  The Golden Section (aka The Golden Ratio)
• Margaret Knight, Colorado College
  Viral Infection Rates of Micromonas Pusilla under Contrasting Nutrient and Light Conditions
• Samuel LeBlanc, Colorado College
  Dispersable Book Embeddings of Cage Graphs
• Kristen Ochle and Heidi Staggs, Colorado State University-Pueblo
  Math Mindsets for the Future
• Edgar Santos, Colorado College
  Victor Neumann-Lara Biography and Dichromatic Numbers of a Digraph
• Lauren Stierman, Colorado College
  A Mathematical Exploration of Strategies to Combat and Control the Zika Virus
• Hudson Tompkins, Western Colorado University
  Patterns of Probability with Game Board
• Christopher Toomey, Colorado State University-Pueblo
  Proof of the Banach-Tarski Paradox
• Jim Wang, United States Air Force Academy
  Exploring Roots of Higher Order Polynomials Through Expanded Greek Ladders
• Joshua Yauney, United States Air Force Academy
  Approximating Roots of Quadratics Using Greek Ladders

Section NExT-RM

What is Section NExT-RM?
The Rocky Mountain Section of the New Experiences in Teaching program (NExT- RM) is a smaller scale version of the national Project NExT program serving the members of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The goals of Section NExT-RM are to support faculty in the first five years of their academic career and to establish links among faculty in the section.

Who is eligible?
Section NExT-RM is open to non-tenured faculty members in the Rocky Mountain Section who are within the first five years of teaching at a university, four-year college, or two-year college within the Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA.

What are my expectations as a fellow?
Section NExT-RM Fellows will remain in contact with one another via an electronic network, and are expected to attend both the Spring 2020 and Spring 2021 Rocky Mountain MAA Section meetings. In particular, they will take part in the planning of some of the 2021 Section NExT-RM sessions.

Does this cost me anything?

Section NExT-RM is a selective professional development program; an application is required. We will provide the fellows with lunch on Friday and Saturday of the work- shop, and expect fellows to obtain travel and the remaining funding (approximately $150 for one night's hotel, registration, and banquet) from their departments or other sources.

The 2020 Section NExT-RM cohort was postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis. With the ongoing pandemic, we hope to instead have the new cohort in Spring 2022.

The Spring Section Business Meeting was held Apr 18, 2020 08:48 AM. The meeting was virtual, based on the cancellation of the Spring Conference due to COVID-19.

The purpose of the Section Activity Grants program is to assist Section members in funding projects in support of Section Mission. These projects must be clearly tied to one or more of the Rocky Mountain Section Mission Goals and the project director must be a member of MAA. Grants will not exceed $750 per project. Matching funds from host institution are preferred, but not required. To apply for a Section Activity Grant, submit the following to the Section Secretary/Treasurer:

1. Description of project (no more than one page);
2. Statement of how project supports Mission Goals (no more than one page);
3. Estimated budget;
4. Description of matching funds available, if any;
5. Vitae of project director(s).

If funded, a report on the project will be filed by the Project Director upon completion (no more than one page) and a report will be made at the next meeting of the Section. Complete details on the selection process and application guidelines are posted on the section website. Grants will be reviewed once a year. All application materials are due November 1st of each year.

The establishment of a Student Recognition Grant Program was approved by the section membership at the 2003 Annual Business Meeting. In support of this program, the Section will set aside $500 every calendar year. From these monies, the Section will make grants for the purpose of recognizing superior achievement in mathematics on the part of (1) students enrolled in post-secondary institutions within the geographic region served by the Section and (2) high school students whose school districts, or other appropriate political subdivisions, substantially intersect the geographic region served by the Section.

1. Originate from a member of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America on behalf of an agency, institution, or organization whose stated purposes are consistent with recognizing or encouraging superior academic achievement at the high school level;
2. Be in the hands of the Chair of the Rocky Mountain Section no later than March 15 of the year in which the proposed recognition is to be made;
3. Include the criteria under which superior achievement in mathematics is to be recognized, together with the time and the manner of such recognition;
4. Report, insofar as possible at the time of the proposal, other potential sources of support together with proposals or requests made or intended; and
5. Be limited to a maximum amount of $250.

The Executive Committee will review all proposals for grants under this policy and will make such grants as, in its sole judgment, it deems proper. In keeping with the section mission, funding priority will be given to grants that include recognition of undergraduate students. Funding decisions will be announced no later than the Annual Business Meeting of the Section. Monies not expended during any particular year shall revert to the Section’s general fund.