by Ken Luther
Many of you know about the Mathematical Association of America, a national organization for those interested in teaching of, and research in, mathematics at the undergraduate level. The membership is subdivided into 29 geographical sections – either by state or groups of states. The Indiana Section has been active since 1924. This year – well, from spring 2009 until spring 2010 – I am the Chair of the Indiana Section.
Our section usually has two meetings per year: a shorter one-day meeting in the fall, and a longer two-day meeting in the spring. We try to have one or two invited speakers at each meeting, and the spring meeting has a large focus on students – with a student problem solving competition, and workshops for students. As Chair, I am primarily responsible for setting the program at the next two meetings (setting a theme, inviting speakers, soliciting talks), while local organizing committees take care of the local details like finding hotels, food, classrooms, and a plentiful supply of coffee. The meetings are held at campuses throughout the state, which provides a great opportunity for us to visit other schools.
Being Chair is actually not that difficult. There are many of people in the organization who have been involved a lot longer than me, so all I need to do is ask, “What do we usually do?” or, “How does this usually work?” and then plan accordingly. The successful operation of the section relies a lot more on these people (who are often officers like Secretary and Treasurer) than any one Chair.
The upcoming fall meeting will be October 17 at the Academic Learning Center of Purdue University Calumet; this is a branch of their campus located between Merrillville and Crown Point. Our two invited speakers are Michael Bolt (Calvin College), who will present “Paint by number: a visualization of complex functions”, and Nicoleta Tarfulea (Purdue University Calumet), who will present “A computational model for tumor-angiogenesis and intervention strategies for cancer”. The spring meeting will be in April at Franklin College (a bit south of Indianapolis). I do not have any speakers lined up yet for the spring meeting, but hope to create a special session dealing with the impact of high technology on the mathematics classroom, particularly with the advent of Wolfram Alpha. If you don’t know what that is, I encourage you to look it up. I’m sure you’ll wish it was around when you took math!
If you are interested in more information about the MAA or the Indiana Section, you can visit: