Wisconsin Section of the MAA Executive Committee Meeting Friday, Sept. 16, 2005 Madison Area Technical College Present: Ben Collins, Jayanthi Ganapathy, Kristen Lampe, John Koker, Andy Matchett, Jim Marty, Ken Price, David Scott, Jeganathan Sriskandarajah, Steve Szydlik, Irfan Ul-Haq. 1. The meeting was called to order at 4:05, David Scott presiding. The Secretary presented a draft of minutes of the business meeting held April 16, 2005. Several typos and a slip in a name were corrected and the tentative year that Mathfest will return to Madison was added. With these changes the minutes were approved as were the minutes of the April 16, 2005 Executive Committee meeting. 2. Andy presented his treasurer's report. noting an error, namely, that Alexander Nagel generously had chosen not to accept an honorarium for his invited address at the Annual Spring Meeting in April, 2005. Therefore the treasury was $150 richer than the report indicated. With this correction, the treasurer's report was accepted. 3. John Koker presented his first Governor's report. Issues that were discussed at the Governor's Meeting at Mathfest included the dues structure question, how to increase member participation at section meetings, and Project Access. We discussed the possibility of sponsoring a national NExT fellow and decided against it. The $2500 cost was prohibitive. 4. Kristen Lampe led a discussion of the State MAA Math Contest. The Edgewood people who are currently running the contest will finish their term this academic year. So we need a new contest committee. The duties of the people running the contest are as follows. Solicit exam questions from colleagues in September or October Mail letters to High School math teachers in September Assemble and print the contest Mail out the exam to the high schools High School teachers do the grading of the exam and report the scores to the contest committee. Mail prizes and certificates to the schools. Our prizes this year went to Po Ling Loh (first place) and Richard Eyers (second place). The first and second place prizes were both $250.00. It has been suggested that it might be good to have larger prizes or more prizes or both. Gary Britton has expressed willingness to work on raising some money for this purpose. The consensus was to give Gary the go-ahead to do so if he is still interested. Kristi would like to contact math departments to seek a new contest committee. She asked about a listserve for department chairs. Ben Collins said there was no such listserve, but that the campus liaisons were supposed to be used for purposes like this. Unfortunately the liaison list is not up to date. For example, Sri is still listed as liaison for UW-Richland. Ben is planning to recruit liaisons to make the list more current. He expects to be in contact with the national office about this. 5. Regarding the Newsletter, Kathy Muhs, the editor, has suggested sending a 1 sheet flyer to members about the spring meeting instead of just a postcard. This flyer would contain the meeting registration form. The consensus was that this would be a cost effective way of making it more convenient for members to register for the meeting. The cost of the mailing would probably be around $50.00. We are all urged to get our various reports to Kathy in a timely fashion, say before October 7. 6. Sri reported on plans for the spring meeting. He has invited Ken Ono, UW-Madison, Steven Rudich, one of the Polya lecturers this year, and Tom Bancroft. 7. Ken Price and Steve Szydlik led a discussion of possibilities for student activities at spring meetings. In addition to the old stand-bys like pizza parties, receptions, and sessions for student talks, there was talk of modern quiz style games like mathematical versions of Jeopardy. There are now 14 student chapters in the section, which gives a measure of student interest in the MAA. 8. Irfan reported on the Fall NExT Workshop which will be Sept. 29 - Oct. 1, 2005. The speaker will be Art Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College. The title of the workshop is "Magical Moments in Teaching and Undergraduate Research". Art Benjamin will receive a $400 honorarium. This workshop continues the tradition of fall workshops for Wisconsin Project NExT. The tradition began with the first such workshop which was in Fall, 1999. 9. Jim Marty reported on the many changes at the WMC. Attendance at the Green Lake meeting was around 2400 people. The WMC supports ARML with a donation of $300 each year. 10. The nominating committee for chair elect will be the Chair, Past Chair, and Chair-Elect. 11. Adjournment at 6:30 p.m. The meeting was followed with dinner at Sri's and Gowri's house in Madison. It was a wonderful evening and the hospitality of the gracious hosts was greatly appreciated by all. Next Meeting: January 20, 2006 at MATC in Madison; MATC room 239 at 4:00 p.m.