Wisconsin Section of the MAA Executive Committee Meeting Friday, Sept. 10, 2004 211 Lange Center, UW-Baraboo Present: Ben Collins, Jayanthi Ganapathy, Kristen Lampe, Andy Matchett, Kathy Muhs, Mark Snavely, Jim Marty, David Scott, Rick Poss 1. The meeting was called to order at 4:15, Jayanthi Ganapathy presiding. 2. Andy presented his treasurer's report, minutes of the Annual Business Meeting, and minutes of the April 17, 2004 Executive Committee meeting. Several corrections were offered to the minutes of the business meeting. With those corrections, the minutes were accepted. The treasurer's report indicated that the section finances are in very good shape, partly due to the grants that Ben and Jayanthi have received. All of Jayanthi's went to good use at the Spring Meeting. Ben noted that his grant, which may be used only for new program features, still has money left. Also this fall's workshop promises to be relatively inexpensive. 3. Rick Poss gave his governor's report. This included the Mathfest meeting schedule for 2005 through 2008. In 2008 the meeting will be in Madison again. There is no further word on the MAA-NCTM position paper on calculus, which is presumably being reworked and polished. The USA Math Olympiad team came in second this year, China being first. USA team member Alison Miller became the first US female ever to win a gold medal in the Olympiad. Rick commented that Melanie Wood was a coach for the team this year, and he voiced the opinion that the US team's success can be attributed in large part to her involvement. 4. Jayanthi reported on the section officer's meeting at Mathfest. Highlights of her report included: - Guidelines for sections are being updated, and the MAA would like comments and suggestions. - Speakers from CUPM are available for section meetings. The contact person for this would be the chair, David Bressoud. - The MAA is trying to encourage involvement of two-year college faculty and AP calculus teachers in section meetings. 5. Kristen Lampe reported on math contests. The Edgewood College faculty group, Steve Post, Ken Jewell, and Linda Uselmann, will coordinate the Wisconsin Section Mathematics Contest this year and next. This year the contest will be on the first Thursday in December. It would make sense to identify a successor group who could shadow the Edgewood group next year to learn the ropes. Interestingly, Linda Uselmann is taking an extended maternity leave to be a stay-at-home mom. Yet she is still doing her part on the math contest. So the Wisconsin Section is the beneficiary of a wonderful mathematical work ethic there. 6. Kathy Muhs will be publishing the section newsletter online this year, mailing only a notification postcard by regular mail. This is an historic occasion. Never again will the Section print the Newsletter in the classical way. Kathy noted that she will use pdf format, which will be more appropriate for several reasons than html format with links. Mark Snavely pointed out that pdf is what the MAA recommends. Reports for the Fall Newsletter must be received by Kathy by October 1. Mark will formulate an advertisement requesting nominations for the distinguished teaching award. 7. David Scott led a discussion of plans for the spring meeting. Mike Starbird and Frank Ferris have tentatively accepted invitations to speak. Mark Snavely offered the use of the website registration form that he created for the 2004 Spring Meeting. The meeting will be April 15-16 at UW-Washington County, in West Bend, WI. 8. Jayanthi conducted a discussion of finding a replacement for Tony Thomas whose term as Student Activities Coordinator has ended. It had been announced that persons interested in the office could contact Tony, but Tony has not received any inquiries so far. During Tony's tenure there has been tremendous progress in encouraging student involvement at spring meetings, and in this sense, much of the work is done. Are there further challenges or further initiatives or new approaches in this area? After batting around lots of ideas on the matter, the Committee decided to actively recruit a person for the position and, to that end, to ask Tony to write up a job description for the position. Ben Collins offered to convey the request to Tony. One suggestion for a new initiative was contacting math club advisors at colleges throughout the state and also contacting the student leaders of those clubs. 9. Ben Collins gave his report on Project NExT - Wisconsin. The Fall workshop will be in Menominee and the presenter will be Sr. Barbara Reynolds. 10. Jim Marty, who is now working full time as a mathematics consultant for the DPI, offered several interesting suggestions for the Spring Meeting Program. Specifically, (1) he offered to find high school teachers to present information about the new curricula that have been developed in response to the standards put out by DPI, (2) he offered to give a presentation on assessment, a hot, timely topic, and (3) he offered to find a college teacher to give a talk on technology use in teaching calculus. Regarding assessment, Jim noted that 20% of the state assessment test is probability and statistics. This may be a bit of a challenge for Wisconsin high school math programs. 11. The nominating committee for chair-elect and for candidates for governor will be the present chair, chair-elect, and past chair (Jayanthi, David and Mark). Jayanthi asked if the sentiment was that we should continue with uncontested elections for chair-elect, and the answer was yes, but with one Executive Committee member dissenting. Several names were suggested as candidates for chair- elect, and it was noted that often governors are former Section chairs. 12. In a discussion of how to involve more graduate students in our Spring Meeting, one idea was to offer practice or mock job interviews and another was to encourage graduate students to give talks in their research areas but direct those talks to a general audience. The Committee left it to Ben Collins to take this subject up with his NExT people to formulate a specific recommendation. It was noted that historically graduate students participate very little. 13. The next meeting will be January 28, 4:00 p.m., at UW-Baraboo. 14. The meeting adjourned at 6:20 to the Little Village. Respectfully submitted, Andy Matchett, Secretary