KSMAA NEWS - MAA Sectionssections.maa.org/kansas/fall2016news.pdf · #70. Sylvanus Thompson had a popular calculus textbook with the extraordinary title Calculus Made Easy: Being

The 2017 KSMAA meeting will be held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. The tentative dates for the meeting are April 28-29, 2017. More information and a call for contributed papers will be forthcoming. As information becomes available it will be posted on the section webpage at http://sections.maa.org/kansas/ . The 12th Kansas Collegiate Math Competition will be held in conjunction with the meeting. For more information on the competition including questions and solutions from past years, visit http://pittstate.edu/department/math/competition .

SPRING 2017 MEETING INFORMATION

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR 2017 MAA KANSAS SECTION AWARDS

Nominations for the 2017 MAA

Section Award for Distinguished

College or University Teaching of

Mathematics are now being accept-

ed. The Kansas Section Selection

Committee will determine the re-

cipient of the award from those

nominated. The awardee will be

honored at the Spring 2017 meeting

of the Section and will be widely

recognized and acknowledged within

the Section. The awardee will

also be the official Section nomi-

nee for the MAA Deborah and

Franklin Tepper Haimo Award

for Distinguished College or

University Teaching of Mathe-

matics. There will be at most

three national awardees, each of

whom will be honored at the

national MAA meeting with a

certificate and check for $1000.

A special session at that meeting is

devoted to talks by the awardees on

aspects of their teaching.

Anyone may make a nomination,

but nominations from chairs or

MAA liaisons in departments of

mathematical sciences are especially

solicited. An outline of the nomina-

tion process can be found on the

(continued on next page)

FALL 2016 VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2

KSMAA NEWS

KANSAS SECTION OF THE MAA

Congratulations to Dr. Qiang Shi on receiving the

2016 MAA Kansas Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching. Dr. Shi is an Associate Professor of Math-ematics at Emporia State University. As a recipient of a section teaching award, Prof. Shi becomes a nominee for the national Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.

2016 KSMAA TEACHING AWARD

web site http://www.maa.org/awards/teachingawards.htm

We urge you to submit a nomination for the MAA Kansas Section Award if you have someone eligible and quali-

fied in your department. Even if not selected this year, it is an honor for someone to have been nominated, and

your candidate can likely be nominated again in a future year. Your department will receive recognition for its

commitment to excellence in teaching, and the work done in preparing a nomination folder for your candidate is

a tribute in itself. Self-nomination is not permitted. (application form on next page)

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR 2017 MAA KANSAS SECTION AWARDS

(CONTINUED)

PAGE 2 KSMAA NEWS

PICTURES FROM THE 2016 KSMAA SECTION MEETING

Vice Chair and Host, Lanee Young, Fort Hays State University, (third from left) with other meeting participants.

Dr. Stephen Kennedy delivering the Fri-day night keynote address.

Getting ready for the student competition.

More pictures can be found on the KSMAA web-site. Photo credits to Scott Thuong, PSU.

Grading the student competition.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR 2017 MAA KANSAS SECTION AWARDS (CONTINUED)

Eligibility

College or university teachers who currently teach a mathematical science at least halftime during the academic year in a

public or private college or university (from two-year college teaching through teaching at the Ph.D. level) in the United

States or Canada. Those on approved leave (sabbatical or other) during the academic year in which they are nominated

qualify if they fulfilled the requirements in the previous year.

More than seven years experience in teaching a mathematical science.

Membership in the Mathematical Association of America.

Guidelines for Nomination

Nominees should

Be widely recognized as extraordinarily successful in their teaching*

Have teaching effectiveness that can be documented

Have had influence in their teaching beyond their own institution**

Foster curiosity and generate excitement about mathematics in their students.

* "teaching" is to be interpreted in its broadest sense, not necessarily limited to classroom teaching. It may include activi-

ties such as preparing students for mathematical competitions at the college level such as the Putnam Prize Competition or

the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, attracting students to become majors in a mathematical science or to become

Ph.D. candidates, working with pre-service or inservice teachers, etc.

** "influence beyond..." can take many forms, including demonstrated lasting impact on alumni, influence on the profes-

sion through curricular revisions in college mathematics teaching with wide-ranging impact, influential publications or in-

novative books concerned with the teaching of college mathematics, etc.

Nominations must be submitted on the enclosed "Nomination Form." Please follow the instructions on that form precisely

to assure uniformity in the selection process.

Please email the completed nomination form to

Professor Cynthia Huffman

Chair, Awards Selection Committee

[email protected]

no later than February 1, 2017.

Nominations for someone from another Section should be sent to the Secretary of the nominee's Section.

The KSMAA Selection Committee will select the Kansas Section awardee soon after the February 1 deadline. After the

selection is made, the nominator and awardee will be encouraged to complete and submit a full nomination packet (see

http://www.maa.org/awards/teachingawards.htm) in time for consideration for the national award.

We look forward to your participation in this exciting MAA venture of taking substantive action to honor extraordinarily

successful teaching. We want to see such teaching recognized at all post-secondary school levels. We depend on you to

help us identify those who merit such recognition.

PAGE 3 KSMAA NEWS

Mathematical Association of America

Awards for

Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics

Nomination Form

PLEASE TYPE

Nominee's Name (First name first): _________________________________________________

College or University Affiliation: __________________________________________________

College or University Address: ____________________________________________________

City: _____________________________________ State: ____________ Zip: ____________

Nominee's email address: _______________________________

Is the nominee a current member of the Mathematical Association of America? ______________

Nominee's number of years teaching experience in a mathematical science: _________________

Has the nominee taught at least half time in a mathematical science during the current academic

year or during the previous year if on approved leave or sabbatical?_______________________

In the space below, please briefly describe the unusual personal and professional qualities of the

nominee that contribute to his or her extraordinary teaching success.

Name of nominator (First name first): _______________________________________________

Address: ___________________________________________________________

Telephone: ______________________ Email: ____________________________________

Signature: __________________________________ Date ___________________

As I am sure you are all aware, the Mathematical Association of America celebrated its centennial in 2015. In recogni-tion of this, Deanna Haunsperger and Pamela Richardson compiled What Were They Thinking?! A Snapshot of Life in 1915, which is available on the MAA’s Celebrating the Centennial of the Mathematical Association of America 1915-2015 webpage at www.maa.org/about-maa/maa-history/celebrating-the-centennial. Here is a selection from this list.

#1. Mathematicians Alice T Schafer (one of the founders of the Association for Women in Mathematics), Rich-ard Hamming (whose contributions include the Hamming code), G. S. Young, Jr. (33rd President of the MAA), Ian Niven (40th President of the MAA), and Lee Lorch (who also was an early civil rights activist) were born, and Dorothy Lewis Bernstein (38th and first woman President of the MAA) turned one

#6. Harvard’s annual tuition was $160

#9. Everyone’s Erdös number was infinite (Paul Erdös was 2)

#15. The cost of a new home averaged $3,200; a gallon of gas, $0.25; a gallon of milk, $0.36

#22. Srinivasa Ramanujan was collaborating with G. H. Hardy in England

#27. The American Statistical Association had just celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1914

#33. The first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was put in place

#35. Einstein’s theory of general relativity was formulated

#46. The 416 students entering Yale in the fall of 1915 had a 72% “survival rate” to graduation

#49. G.H. Hardy and M. Riesz’s “The General Theory of Dirichlet’s Series” appeared

#54. The most expensive textbook in print in any discipline was Albert E. Church’s Elements of Descriptive Geome-try, which sold for $2.50

#64. Wacław Sierpiński described the Sierpinski triangle

#70. Sylvanus Thompson had a popular calculus textbook with the extraordinary title Calculus Made Easy: Being a

Very-Simplest Introduction to those Beautiful Methods of Reckoning which are Generally Called by the Terrifying Names of the Differential Calculus and the Integral Calculus

#93. The average annual wage in the US was $687

#100. On December 30-31 at Ohio State University, 104 delegates representing the US and Canada came to-gether to address the issue earlier described by Herbert Ellsworth Slaught that “the great intermediate field of collegiate mathematics… so far has had no organized attention.” From this was formed the Mathematical Asso-ciation of America

The list included many other interesting facts and it was very difficult to select only a few to highlight. In the spirit of this national snapshot of 1915, here is a list of a few items related to Kansas in 1915 gleaned from a variety of internet sources.

#1. Annual room and board at the University of Kansas was estimated at $140 to $220 per year

#2. Dwight D. Eisenhower graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with the rank of second lieutenant

#3. Kansas became one of only a handful of states to establish its own film censorship board

#4. Arthur Capper succeeded George Hodges as the Governor of Kansas

#5. Hesston College began offering college level courses

KSMAA HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT BY TIM FLOOD, PSU, KSMAA HISTORIAN

(continued on next page)

PAGE 5 KSMAA NEWS

26th Annual Kansas City Regional Mathematics Technology EXPO Learn about all the great things your colleagues have been doing with technology in the math classroom.

October 7 & 8, 2016, UMKC

Web: http://www.kcmathtechexpo.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/KC-Math-Tech-Expo/148308951981880?fref=nf

Twitter: @KCMathTechExpo #kcEXPO2016

Research Fellowships Available at the Linda Hall Library Interested in working with original sources in the history of mathematics? Fellowships are available at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, one of the world’s leading independent research libraries in science, engineering, technolo-gy, and their histories. Take advantage of the LHL extensive collections and join a community of scholars, reference librarians, and in-house historians of science. For more information, visit http://www.lindahall.org/fellowships/.

#6. Kansas State Normal (now Emporia State University) tied with Baker for the Kansas Conference football title

#7. Cooper Memorial College (now Sterling College) offered The Mathematical Theory of Investment for “students who are preparing themselves for commercial careers and for the public service”

#8. U. G. Mitchell of the University of Kansas was appointed as an associate editor for the American Mathemat-ical Monthly

#9. The first Kansas Section meeting was held at Topeka High School on November 12 (prior to the formation of the Mathematical Association of America in December)

#10. A.J. Hoare of Fairmount College was elected as the Chair of the Kansas Section

#11. Solomon Lefschetz of the University of Kansas was elected as the Vice-Chair of the Kansas Section

#12. T.E. Mergendahl of Emporia College was elected as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Kansas Section

I hope this helps to give a snapshot of how times have changed since our founding.

CONTINUATION OF KSMAA HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT

Revised Section Bylaws Approved Revisions to the KSMAA Section bylaws were brought up to a vote at the annual business meeting in April. The revisions were approved by the section and then were approved by the MAA Board of Governors at their meeting in August before MathFest. The bylaws can be found on the KSMAA webpage at

http://sections.maa.org/kansas/2016KSMAAbylaws.pdf. Thanks to the Bylaws Revision Committee members - Cynthia Huffman (chair), Leah Childers, and Joe Yanik.

PAGE 6 KSMAA NEWS

Cynthia Huffman Pittsburg State University

Pittsburg, KS 66762 [email protected]

(620) 235-4409

The KSMAA Newsletter is published twice a year; once early in the year and then again in the fall. A link to each newsletter will be sent out via email by the MAA. The newsletters are also archived on the section webpage at http://sections.maa.org/kansas .

The newsletter can also be a forum for sharing news or disseminat-ing information to other mathematics departments across the state. If your department has any news to be included in the KSMAA Newsletter, please send it to KSMAA Public Information Coordi-nator:

KSMAA NEWSLETTER

KSMAA OFFICERS 2016-2017

Treasurer: Qiang Shi Emporia State University Emporia, KS 66801 [email protected] (620) 341-5452 Secretary: Leah Childers Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, KS 66762 [email protected] (620) 235-4406 Historian: Tim Flood Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, KS 66762 [email protected] (620) 235-4401 Coordinator of Section Liaisons: Tim Flood Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, KS 66762 [email protected] (620) 235-4401

Public Information Coordinator: Cynthia Huffman Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, KS 66762 [email protected] (620) 235-4409 Competition Co-Coordinator:

Mat Johnson Department of Mathematics University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045 [email protected] (785) 864-7307 Competition Co-Coordinator:

Scott Thuong Department of Mathematics Pittsburg State University Pittsburg, KS 66762 [email protected] (620) 235-4408 fax: (620) 235-4429

Governor: Joe Yanik Emporia State University Emporia, KS 66801 [email protected] (620) 341-5639 Chairperson: Lanee Young Fort Hays State University Fort Hays, Kansas 67601 [email protected] (785) 628-5669 Vice Chair: Jeremy Martin University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas 66045 [email protected] (785) 864-7114 Vice Chair-Elect: Beth Edmonds Johnson County Community College Overland Park, Kansas 66210 [email protected] (913) 469-8500, ext. 3151

PAGE 7 KSMAA NEWS