MAA Liaison Newsletter

May 2002

Now is the time to stop thinking about all those ungraded exams on your desk and the unopened e-mails from February. Instead, let's concentrate on the summer and beyond.

PREP Workshops

There are still openings available in two of this year's PREP workshops:

• Mathematical Methods and Modeling for Secondary Mathematics Teacher Education, on June 23-28, 2002, at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon; and

• Assessment at the Department Level #2, to be held July 29-31, 2002, in Burlington, Vermont, right before MathFest.

Recall that room and board are free, courtesy of an NSF grant. For more details and applications, check out http://www.maa.org/pfdev/prep/prep.html.

MathFest

Remember that MathFest is coming up in Burlington, Vermont, on August 1-3. The deadlines for preregistration are listed at the end of this newsletter. For details about invited talks, contributed papers, minicourses and other special events, click on the banner page at MAA Online, http://www.maa.org, or look it up in the April issue of Focus.

SIGMAAs

Do you have a special interest in a particular subfield of mathematics or math education? Then a SIGMAA (Special Interest Group of the MAA) might be what you are looking for. There are currently four SIGs:

• RUME- Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education

• BIG- Business, Industry, and Government

• Stats-Ed- Statistics Education

• HOM- History of Mathematics

For more information, go to http://www.maa.org/sigmaa/sigmaa.html. And, if you don't see a SIGMAA you might want to join, you can propose one through the committee, chaired by Stephan Carlson at Rose-Hulman. The link above will give you details of procedures and a model charter for submitting an application for new SIGs. If you have questions about this, contact Gretchen Brown, gbrown@maa.org.

Staff Changes

And speaking of Gretchen Brown, or "gbrown," you probably have noticed that Brie Danner has left the MAA. For the past two years, Brie has served the MAA as Program Coordinator. She and her husband have recently moved to Delaware for new work opportunities. Brie will be missed. We wish her well in her new undertakings. We are pleased to announce that Gretchen Brown has come on board as the new Program Coordinator. Gretchen recently graduated from the University of Maryland with a major in Government and Politics. You will be receiving regular liaison bulletins and newsletters from Gretchen. Hopefully, many of you will be able to meet her at MathFest in August.

We should mention one other staffing change. Tom Rishel, is stepping down from the position of Associate Executive Director, Director of Programs & Services, and will be returning to Cornell University. We thank him for his dedicated service for the past two years and wish him well in his new adventures with Cornell University. Tom will be replaced by Michael Pearson, from Mississippi State University. Some of you may know Michael because he has been the Associate Chair of the Mathematics and Statistics Department at Mississippi State University and has been very active in the Louisiana/Mississippi Section. We're happy to have Michael joining us here in Washington in the middle of June.

Committee Updates

The MAA's Committee on the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics (CUPM) is preparing the latest edition of its Curriculum Guide. Focus groups and panel discussions have been held at regional and national meeting. CUPM's subcommittee on Curriculum Reform Across the First Two Years (CRAFTY) has also put in a great deal of work with its Curriculum Foundations Workshops that will contribute a lot to the new document.

CUPM still wants your input. Check out http://www.maa.org/news/cupm.html for interim reports and the latest updates. Focus groups will again be held at MathFest in Burlington. If you are interested in participating, contact Dr. Dora Cardenas Ahmadi d.ahmadi@morehead-st.edu

or Herb Kasube hkasube@hilltop.bradley.edu. Watch for events at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore as well.

Deadlines to Remember

• June 17, 2002 - early bird MathFest registration deadline

• July 15, 2002 - regular MathFest registration deadline

• August 1-3, 2002, MathFest, Burlington, Vermont

You may also register at MathFest itself

• January 15-18, 2003, Joint Meetings, Baltimore
For Special Sessions, Contributed Paper Session Organizers, and MAA Session Organizers, contact Jim Tattersall at tat@providence.edu