Spring 2019 Newsletter

Laura Scull	scull_l@fortlewis.edui)
Veronika Furst	furst_v@fortlewis.edu


2019:	Jan. 16–19	Joint Mathematics Meetings	Baltimore, MD
	March 2	Pikes Peak Regional Undergraduate Math Conference	U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

	March 14–17	ICCTM	Scottsdale, AZ
	April 5–6	MAA Rocky Mountain Section Meeting	Fort Lewis College, Durango, CO
	April 3–6	NCTM Annual Meeting	San Diego, CA
	July 31–Aug 3	MAA MathFest	Cincinnati, OH


2020:	Jan. 15–18	Joint Mathematics Meetings	Denver, CO
	April 1–4	NCTM Centennial Meeting	Chicago, IL
	July 29–Aug 1	MAA Math Fest	Philadelphia, PA
	Oct. 21–24	NCTM Annual Meeting	St. Lous, MO


2021:	Jan. 6–9	Joint Mathematics Meetings	Washington, DC
	Aug. 4–7	MAA MathFest	Sacramento, CA
	Sept. 22–25	NCTM Annual Meeting	Atlanta, GA


2022	Jan. 5–8	Joint Mathematics Meetings	Seattle, WA
	Aug. 3–6	MAA Math Fest	Washington, DC


2023	Jan. 4–7	Joint Mathematics Meetings	Boston, MA
	Aug. 2–5	MAA Math Fest	Tampa, Fl

Dear Section,

Let me start with belated best wishes for the New Year.

Deep in Winter (well, this being Colorado there are still students walking around in shorts), thoughts turn to our spring meeting, which will happen April 5/6 in Durango, chaired by Laura Scull and Veronica Furst. With Durango being far from many places (or, as Laura prefers: many places being far from Durango) we are looking at a slightly shifted schedule that will allow many of us to travel on Friday after daybreak, and still make it for the meeting's opening. I am looking forward to seeing many of you there. As usual, you will find more about the spring meeting later in this newsletter.

Speaking of travel times reminds me of the large geographic extent of our section. The Executive Committee (EC) is certainly aware of this, and we try to offer equal opportunities to all section members, but we cannot change geography or invent faster modes of travel, nor can we conjure events out of thin air. I would like to encourage you to propose section meetings (we still are looking for a venue for our 2020 sectional meeting), or other section-sponsored activities: We have an activity grant program with proposals due annually on November 1, and we would love to see more proposals. Chances of funding have been excellent in the past years. If you are interested, but would like advice, contact me by email, or talk to me at the sectional meeting!

I also would like to encourage all of you to consider serving in one of our many officer roles without which our section could not work. Some of these positions are elected, and we have a hard-working nomination committee (thank you Kyle Riley, Gulden Karakok, and Greg Oman for your work) who look for candidates for these elections. If you are interested in serving in future in one of the elected positions, please contact the nominating committee.

There are also other positions (such as being on the nominating committee) that are not elected, but to which members (according to our bylaws) will be named by the elected officers.

The common-sense mandate we have from the national organization is to have these roles, in particular, the nomination and awards committees, filled from members selected equally from the membership. The naive solution — picking members by random from the member roll — however is clearly not a good option, as we cannot force anyone to serve in an officer role. I therefore would like to encourage you to think about serving in some of these roles, and to talk (or email) to me (or other EC members) if you could be interested. This is not a burden: The time commitment for the awards committees, for example, is probably less than half a day per year. Serving on such a committee also might help you with your own nominations or grant proposals in the future.

Some of the named positions take significantly more work, and I would like to thank the incumbents for their contribution to the section, in particular our long-time newsletter editor Linda Sundbye, our Section NExT committee Rebecca Swanson and Amanda Schaeffer-Fry, and our new CCTM representative Heather Johnson.

Finally, I would like to thank my predecessor, Michael Jacobson, who in the (definitely not ceremonial, but hard-work) role of past chair has helped us enormously and is still doing so until the election of the new chair-elect following the spring meeting.

Amongst the changes that happened over the last year is that the deadline for the Spring Newsletter moved earlier to January 15. I'm thus writing this before flying off to Baltimore for the Joint Meetings. Don't forget that the 2020 Joint Meetings will be on our home turf in Denver. The deadline for proposing special sessions for this event will be April 2.

Wishing You an Excellent Spring Term,

Alexander Hulkpe,
CSU — Fort Collins
Chair, Rocky Mountain Section

Newsletter Editor Position

After 15 years serving as Newsletter Editor, I am retiring from this position. I have certainly enjoyed this work over the years, but it is time to let someone younger and more energetic takeover. If you are interested in this position, please contact one of the members of the Executive Committee.

Best wishes to all,

Linda Sundbye
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Rocky Mountain Section Newsletter Editor

24th Annual Colorado Mathematics Awards Ceremony/Reception

Plans are underway for CMA XXIV -- the 24th Colorado Mathematics Awards Ceremony and Reception to be held on Tuesday, May 7 at the Grant - Humphreys Mansion in Denver. At the school level we'll be recognizing the top ten participants on MATHCOUNTS, the AMC 8, 10, and 12 contests, and the members of the 2018 Colorado American Regions Mathematics League team. At the collegiate level we'll be recognizing all Section Putnam scorers in the top 500, and the top team(s) on the Mathematical Contest in Modeling. We expect to recognize between 50 and 60 winners. With the winners, parents, and teachers, we expect between 120 and 130 to attend the event.

We appreciate the support that the Rocky Mountain Section has provided for this event over the years.

Other sponsors of the Colorado Mathematics Awards: the Professional Engineers of Colorado, and individual and past members of the Colorado Mathematics Awards Steering Committee. Suggestions for additional sources of funding are always welcomed. Please contact me at gibbs_d@fortlewis.edu.

Thank you,

Dick Gibbs
Co-Chair CMA Steering Committee
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics
Fort Lewis College

Section Nominating Committee Report

The nominating committee is pleased to report that we currently have two candidates nominated for the position of chair-elect. As you may know, the chair-elect is a very important position in leadership for the Rocky Mountain Section.

The chair-elect serves one year as chair-elect, two years as chair of the section, and one year as past-chair. In the first and fourth year the position includes the role of chairing our teaching awards committee and also being chair of the section activity grant award committee. As chair, the person elected would lead the executive committee and preside over all business meetings for the section. The chair is also responsible with appointing committee members to the standing committees.

As you may recall, this is our first election under our revised by-laws, which means the actual vote will occur electronically. The nomination committee will continue to accept nominations and all nominated candidates will be presented at our next section business meeting, April 6 in Durango, CO. At the business meeting, we will also accept nominations from the floor and then close nominations. The actual election will be held electronically with section members contacted via email to vote following the same procedures that are used for the elections conducted for our congressional representative.

If you have anyone you would like to nominate then please feel free to contact any member of the nominating committee:

Gulden Karakok, (University of Northern Colorado) Gulden.karakok@unco.edu
Greg Oman, (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs) goman@uccs.edu
Kyle Riley, Chair (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology) Kyle.Riley@sdsmt.edu

Note: Elected officers of the section must be members of the MAA.

Respectfully submitted,
The Nominating Committee

NOMINEES FOR CHAIR-ELECT:

Dan Swenson
Associate Professor, Black Hills State University

BIO:

Dr. Swenson received a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.A. in Philosophy from Iowa State University in 2003. He went on to study Mathematics at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), where he completed an M.S. in 2007 and a Ph.D. in 2009. Since August 2009 he has been a faculty member at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD, where he currently holds the rank of Associate Professor. Some of his current interests include the study of political redistricting (gerrymandering), math education, and any kind of puzzles or games.

POSITION STATEMENT:

I have been actively involved in the MAA since moving to the Rocky Mountain Section. I have attended and delivered a talk at every section meeting since the spring of 2010. I was also fortunate to be named a Section NExT fellow in 2010-2011, and I felt that that experience was helpful to me in many ways as a new faculty member. Quite a few of us from that cohort are still active in the section, and I enjoy re-connecting with them at least every year at the section meeting.

One thing that makes the MAA an especially valuable and important organization for me is its commitment to excellence in teaching mathematics at all levels, especially through its excellent publications and conferences. In particular, the Pikes Peak Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conference and the annual Section meeting are valuable opportunities for our undergraduate Mathematics and Mathematics Education students to directly experience new and exciting mathematics, here in our own geographic region. I have repeatedly seen our students get inspired by a talk they attended, or a conversation with someone they just met, at these events. Ensuring robust participation in our section and at our meetings is and will be a significant challenge, but it is critical to our success as a section.

I am proud to be a part of the Rocky Mountain Section, and I look forward to continuing to work with the section in the future. Thank you!

Jonathan Poritz
Associate Professor, CSU – Pueblo

BIO:

Dr. Poritz has been at Colorado State University-Pueblo for about thirteen years, but before that he was one of those tattered minstrel mathematicians one sees wandering dusty backroads with nothing but a piece of chalk and a box of Springer-yellow textbooks to his name. In total, he was a student or faculty member at around a dozen universities in every time zone in the contiguous 48 and two in Europe. During breaks in the mathematical wandering, he also worked in various IT firms, from start-ups to multi-nationals, doing things like: AI, cryptography, and consulting on public policy towards technology. His research has studied a variety of pure and applied problems, but his recent focus has been on pedagogy. He has written a couple of textbooks and recently became the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning on the CSU-Pueblo campus. He is also working at the state level in Colorado to get more open educational resources to students in higher education as chair of the state OER Council created last year by the Colorado legislature. More information is available on his website poritz.net/jonathan .

POSITION STATEMENT:

If elected, there are many things I would like to pursue under the umbrella of all of the wonderful work that the MAA already does. Here are three specifics:

OER: I've been working on my campus and at the state level in Colorado to promote the use of "Open Educational Resources" in higher ed. These include free, and freely customizable, textbooks and other written materials, but also go much farther. For example, another OER is the amazing tool WeBWorK, an open-source online homework system supported by the MAA and developed with support from the NSF, which uses a Perl-like language to build sophisticated, customized problems for a range of mathematical topics. OER can improve students' lives by lowering part of the high financial barrier imposed by today's funding model of higher ed, while improving faculty members' lives by giving us greater control over the educational content and approach used in our classes as realized by the materials [such as textbooks] we use. In the same way the MAA has supported WeBWorK, it can support OER more generally, and this would be something I would very much like to facilitate.
Pedagogy: These are exciting times for mathematical pedagogy, with new results of careful studies coming out about what makes for effective instruction, as well as new tools (many technological) allowing new pedagogical methodologies. The MAA can share information, bring in speakers, run workshops to share these developments.
Research: It is an even more exciting time for pure mathematical research, of course: in recent years and months we've had a new Mersenne prime, controversies about the Riemann Hypothesis and the ABC Conjecture, and advances towards the twin prime conjecture, just to name a few things it is fairly easy to discuss with a wide audience. It is also a moment, in the larger sense, that mathematics is relevant to so many fields, from astrophysics to cryptocurrencies to topologies of social networks to machine learning -- it's all math! The MAA can help to spread the joy of mathematical discovery to a wider audience, to the general public, to our students, and to the professionals in so many fields who now use quite sophisticated mathematics in everything they do.

Fort Lewis College in Durango to host the annual
Rocky Mountain Section Meeting
April 5 – 6, 2019

The 2019 Rocky Mountain Section meeting will be held April 5-6, 2019 on the campus of Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. The conference will begin late Friday afternoon and run all day Saturday. The meeting promises two days of engaging speakers, student activities, book sales, and more.

Plenary Speakers for the meeting will include:

Dr. Rachel Levy
MAA Deputy Executive Director

Dr. Jeanne Clelland
University of Colorado at Boulder; Rocky Mountain Section’s 2018 Burton W. Jones Distinguished Teaching Award recipient.

Dr. Ian Pierce
United States Air Force Academy; Rocky Mountain Section’s 2018 Early Career Teaching Award recipient

The program will also include a Friday evening banquet, and the return of Student Jeopardy. Additionally, we invite members to consider submitting abstracts to speak in sessions on History of Math, Math Ed, General Math and of course our Student Talks.

Registration and information on abstract submission will be available soon at: http://www.fortlewis.edu/maa-rms2019

The deadline for abstract submission is March 8.

For more information, contact the Program Co-Chairs:

Laura Scull scull_l@fortlewis.edui)
Veronika Furst furst_v@fortlewis.edu

Student Activities

Please join us at the Rocky Mountain Section Meeting in April. Enjoy these great activities!

Give a talk! This conference is a great place to give a talk to fellow students and faculty members. Prepare your talk and sign up to present in a student session. Sign up at the conference website.

Present a Poster! Present a poster in the inaugural History of Mathematics Student Poster Contest. More information on the next page of this newsletter.

This is Jeopardy! Come to compete or to cheer on your favorite team! Get together a team of 4-5 students from your school or sign up to be put on an inter-school team. There is a limited number of teams; they will be entered in the competition on a first-come, first-served basis. There is also a limit of 5 students on the inter-school team, so register early! Details will be available at the conference website.

Free lunch after Jeopardy on Saturday! On Saturday after Jeopardy, there is a free student lunch (pizza for most; allergen friendly food available, especially if you email me with specific allergies). Note that the student lunch is on Saturday, not Friday as in recent years. Please come and join us!

Please direct questions to Beth Schaubroeck, beth.schaubroeck@usafa.edu .

HoM Student Paper Contest

See http://sections.maa.org/rockymt/2019_HoMStudentPosterContest.pdf.

16^th Annual Pikes Peak Regional
Undergraduate Mathematics Conference
United States Air Force Academy
Saturday, March 2, 2019

Save the Date! The 16th Annual Pikes Peak Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (PPRUMC) will be hosted in Polaris Hall at the United States Air Force Academy on Saturday March 2, 2019. Please note the date change to the first Saturday in March instead of the last Saturday in February. We are looking forward to hosting this conference in Polaris Hall, USAFA’s newest building, which is easily accessible to visitors. As in past years, registration will be free and lunch will be provided. We ask that you pre-register so that we can plan appropriately for lunch.

Please visit the conference website at http://sections.maa.org/rockymt/PPRUMC/PPRUMC_2019.html for additional information. If you would like to give a talk, we welcome your abstract and title submissions by February 22^nd.

If you have questions, please contact our conference director: Shelby Stanhope, at shelby.stanhope@usafa.edu

NSF SIMIODE Summer 2019 Workshops

See SIMIODE.pdf.

SIMIODE Invitation to Host SCUDEM IV

See SCUDEM.pdf.

MAA Rocky Mountain Section Suggestions for Speakers

The Rocky Mountain Section would like to offer the following suggestions, especially to first-time speakers, regarding preparation of a talk at the conference.

The standard talk length is 20 minutes, (with longer times available upon request, subject to the limitations of the program). Thus, you should prepare your presentation to fit the time allotted. If possible, plan to leave a few minutes at the end of your presentation for questions.
A moderator will be assigned to facilitate each session of presentations. The moderator will introduce the speaker, assist in distribution of any handouts, signal the end of the presentation, and ask for questions from the audience.
If handouts are to be provided, give them to the moderator prior to the beginning of the session including your talk. Plan to bring about 35 handouts and be prepared to give attendees your e-mail address in case the supply runs out. It may also be possible to arrange for posting of electronic materials from your talk on the section website. Check with program organizers concerning this possibility.
Do not include too much detailed technical material in your presentation. Focus on providing the audience with insight into your topic and its key notions. Remember that most members of the audience will not be experts in the field you are discussing, and that the audience is likely to include students.
All session rooms will be equipped with a projector and a laptop hook up. Accordingly, you can present your talk using Power Point slides, PDF, or similar, which will greatly enhance the pace of a presentation. However, make sure that notes on the slides or transparencies are typed in a font big enough and with spacing adequate to be seen clearly 50 to 100 feet away.

Grants Available

Section Activity Grants Available

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:

Description of project (no more than one page);
Statement of how project supports Mission Goals (no more than one page);
Estimated budget;
Description of matching funds available, if any;
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.

Student Recognition Grants Available

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.
Proposals for such grants must

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;
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;
Include the criteria under which superior achievement in mathematics is to be recognized, together with the time and the manner of such recognition;
Report, insofar as possible at the time of the proposal, other potential sources of support together with proposals or requests made or intended; and
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.

About Our Logo

The logo for the Rocky Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America was created in by Mark Petersen in 2001. A graduate student in the Applied Mathematics Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder at that time, Mark says of his design:

"The mountain symbols were chosen because analysis is the foundation for all of mathematics. The equation e^iπ + 1 = 0 must rank among the most beautiful formulas in mathematics. It connects the five most important constants of mathematics with the three most important operations - addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. These five constants symbolize the four major branches of classical mathematics: arithmetic, represented by 0 and 1; algebra, by i; geometry, by π; and analysis, by e. (Quoted from Eli Maor's e, The Story of a Number). I chose to portray this equation as a train because rail has historically been the life blood of the American West, and trains are complementary to any mountain scene."

Meetings Calendar

2019: Jan. 16–19 Joint Mathematics Meetings Baltimore, MD

March 2 Pikes Peak Regional Undergraduate Math Conference U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

March 14–17 ICCTM Scottsdale, AZ

April 5–6 MAA Rocky Mountain Section Meeting Fort Lewis College, Durango, CO

April 3–6 NCTM Annual Meeting San Diego, CA

July 31–Aug 3 MAA MathFest Cincinnati, OH

2020: Jan. 15–18 Joint Mathematics Meetings Denver, CO

April 1–4 NCTM Centennial Meeting Chicago, IL

July 29–Aug 1 MAA Math Fest Philadelphia, PA

Oct. 21–24 NCTM Annual Meeting St. Lous, MO

2021: Jan. 6–9 Joint Mathematics Meetings Washington, DC

Aug. 4–7 MAA MathFest Sacramento, CA

Sept. 22–25 NCTM Annual Meeting Atlanta, GA

2022 Jan. 5–8 Joint Mathematics Meetings Seattle, WA

Aug. 3–6 MAA Math Fest Washington, DC

2023 Jan. 4–7 Joint Mathematics Meetings Boston, MA

Aug. 2–5 MAA Math Fest Tampa, Fl

Burton W. Jones Award Nomination Form

You may use the form on the section website, or copy the PDF version of the form.

Early Career Teaching Award Nomination Form

You may use the PDF form on the section website, or copy the PDF version of the form.

Early Career Teaching Award Guidelines

Part of the core mission for the Rocky Mountain Section is to provide recognition for quality mathematics teaching. The Early Career Teaching Award was established to recognized excellence in teaching in the mathematical sciences for faculty that are early in their career.

Eligibility

Nominees must:

Hold a doctorate 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 the 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 his or her doctorate for more than 7 years then the nominator must indicate on the nomination form the times that the nominee was not teaching. Common exceptions to the 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

Guidelines for nomination

Nominees for the award may be made by any member of the Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA. Nominees should:

Be recognized as extraordinarily successful in their teaching
Have effectiveness in teaching undergraduate mathematics that can be documented
Have had influence in their teaching beyond their own classrooms
Foster curiosity and generate excitement about mathematics

Nomination form is due December 15

Complete nomination packet is due January 15

Nomination Packet

A complete nomination packet should consist of the following documentation as it is described below.

Nomination Form and One-Page Summary – Describe the unusual and personal and professional qualities of the nominee that contribute to his or her extraordinary teaching success, and attach to this completed nomination form.
Narrative (Up to 2 pages) – Describe the nominee's extraordinary success in teaching by providing a narrative of the nominee's background, experience, teaching style, special contributions, other teaching awards, and any additional evidence of the nominee's unusual achievement in teaching. Note especially effectiveness in teaching undergraduate mathematics and influence beyond the nominee's own classrooms. The narrative should not exceed two single-spaced pages.
Additional Documentation (Up to 2 pages) – Submit no more than two pages of further evidence to document the nominee's extraordinary teaching success. This documentation will vary greatly from institution to institution, but may include summaries of peer or student evaluations, comments on teaching, possible increases in numbers of majors in mathematics (with clear evidence of the nominee's substantial responsibility for them), possible student success in mathematics competitions (with clear evidence of the nominee's substantial responsibility for them), success in research in mathematics conducted by undergraduate students under the direction of the nominee, production of superior quality honors theses by undergraduate students under the direction of the nominee, development of curricular materials successfully used by colleagues, adoption of the nominee's teaching methods or techniques by experienced colleagues, service as a respected adviser for a student group, etc.

Nominators should bear in mind that the selection committee for the award might view a nomination more positively if it is accompanied not just by carefully chosen testimonials from a few selected students and faculty, but also reports comments and criticism which is representative of the whole spectrum of opinion among students and faculty on the nominee's teaching.
Letters of Recommendation (Each letter is one page. Maximum of 5 letters.)
- Two letters from the nominee's present or former students.
- One letter from the nominee's colleagues (could be the department chair).
- At most two additional letters from anyone qualified to comment on the nominee's extraordinary teaching success, including additional students and/or colleagues.

Voluntary Section Dues

Many thanks to those members who have made a voluntary dues contribution to the section along with their Spring Meeting Registration!

Although the section has found itself in good financial health in recent years, additional funds are always needed in order to pursue special initiatives suggested by the membership. The successful John Fauvel Memorial Conference and William Dunham Special Lecture, both supported in part by the Section Activity Grant program, provide excellent examples of what can be done with even a small amount of funding to support our section mission and goals.

Contributions may also be made in support of the Pikes Peak Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Conference; simply choose "Other" on the coupon below, and specify "PPRUMC" in the space provided. A voluntary section dues contribution from you now can help build up funds in support of similar initiatives!

A Voluntary Dues Contribution Form is also available on the Section Website in docx, odt, or pdf formats. Complete and send with your contribution to the Section Treasurer/Secretary.

MAA Rocky Mountain Section Voluntary Dues Contribution Form