will host the Spring 2013 MD-DC-VA Sec-
tion Meeting of the MAA. Highlights in-
clude:
University of Hartford and Ann Stewart
from Hood College will be offering a late
afternoon workshop entitled “Teaching with
Classroom Voting and Clickers.” The work-
shop will focus on the logistics of classroom
as well as recent research on voting peda-
gogy.
James Madison University will be giving the
Friday evening banquet address, entitled
“Knights, Knaves, Normals and My Neph-
ew.”
paper sessions, there will be two invited addresses. The Sat-
urday morning invited address will be given by Maryland’s
Professor of the year John Hamman from Montgomery
College. His presentation is titled “Proving the Impossible.”
The Saturday afternoon invited address will be given by
Robert Allen from the University of Wisconsin – La
Crosse. He will speak on “Surviving an Outbreak of Zombi-
ism.”
Jeopardy competition and Undergraduate Prize Session
including Radical Dash.
abstracts and biographies of the invited speakers, appeared
on pages 4 - 5.
M D - D C - V A S e c t i o n o f t h e M a t h e m a t i c a l A s s o c i a t i o n o f A m e r i c a
Spring 2013 Newsletter
To find maps, hotels, registration, and program information,
visit the MD-DC-VA Section website at
http://sections.maa.org/mddcva/
Lodging
121 East Naylor Mill Road
Salisbury, MD 21826
128 Troopers Way
Salisbury, MD 21804
2013.
Joint meetings of MAA and AMS:
January 15-18, 2013, in Balti-
more, MD. Proposals for AMS
special sessions must be sub-
mitted by April 1, 2013.
Inside this issue:
meeting is quickly approaching.
MD, on the 12th and 13th of April.
It looks like another great program
that Dave Taylor has put together
for us. Thanks, Dave!
has been to increase attendance at
our section meetings. We have
done this with some success re-
cently and we hope to continue
that trend as we move toward the
centennial celebration of the
regular meeting attendees, please
fited from the section meetings. If
you are thankful for the opportuni-
ties you have had to take in inter-
esting talks about mathematics and
the teaching of mathematics, fel-
lowship with others in the field
who are in similar situations, serve
our community as an officer or
just recharge your batteries in the
midst of a busy semester, please
consider encouraging a colleague
institution that is seldom repre-
sented at the section meetings. We
believe there is great benefit to our
organization and we want others to
share in that benefit.
ic of discussion at the January
Board of Governors meeting was
the budget. As reported to the sec-
tion for the past several years, the
MAA has been running operating
deficits on the order of $200,000
for the past several years, in spite
of all efforts to bring income and
expenses into balance. In August
the Executive Committee and the
MAA staff proposed and the board
of governors endorsed a plan of
strategic investments to address
Board of Governors was presented
a budget for 2013 with a planned
operating deficit of around
$600,000. This was thoroughly
The planned deficit is made up of
two roughly equal parts. First
there is an operating deficit of a
comparable magnitude to what has
been observed in recent years.
Second, there is a component of
investment for future savings.
site, transitional expenses to in-
source the MAA’s member ser-
vices and product sales functions,
and modernization of software for
managing membership and prod-
annual savings from these initia-
tives combined with increased in-
come from improved marketing
bring the budget back into balance
within one or two years.
The MAA’s unrestricted cash re-
serves will probably be not quite
sufficient to cover the deficit in
2013. Although the organization
$16 million plus somewhere
not easily accessed. Much of the
investment portfolio is subject to
restrictions imposed by donors or
the Board of Governors, and the
considerable value of the real es-
tate cannot be directly converted to
useable funds. For these reasons,
it is contemplated to borrow any
necessary funds to cover the 2013
shortfall. This would be a sound
approach because interest rates are
very low and the payback period
for any necessary loan is expected
to be short.
Membership Structure. The
plified structure for MAA mem-
bership. Members can expect to
see the new structure when they
renew their memberships for 2014.
In the new structure dues for
membership are separated from
of membership. The overall
pact on the cost of membership for
almost all members, but the sim-
plification should make member-
more efficient.
rangement has been developed for
book sales at section meetings.
Members of the section will be
provided a discount code prior to
the meeting with which they can
purchase books on line at 35% off
list price. The code will be valid
for both the week prior to and the
week following the section meet-
ing. Book orders with the discount
will also be taken at the meeting,
where examination copies of many
of the books will be on hand.
Awards. Two long time members
of our section received special
honors at the Joint Mathematics
Meetings. William Hawkins re-
Daniel Joseph - Chair
Dan Kalman - Governor
teachers, researchers, and practi-
ers take place in a larger context of
human endeavor and society. Il-
lustrating her points with events
from her own life and career, she
argued for the importance of look-
ing beyond narrowly defined roles,
to understand more broadly each
person’s experiences, knowledge,
on a person’s gender, ethnicity, or
educational background.
were recently recognized by their
states for excellence in teaching.
John Hamman (Montgomery Col-
Professor of the Year by the Car-
negie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching and the Council
for the Advancement and Support
of Education (CASE) and Laura
Taalman (James Madison Univer-
standing Faculty Awards, the
guished Service to Mathematics,
vice award. Hawkins has served
the MAA for many years as Direc-
tor of the Office of Minority Af-
fairs, and for most of that time he
has been an unpaid volunteer. He
has played a leadership role in
planning and securing funding for
many initiatives aimed at increas-
ing participation in mathematics
record of minority mathemati-
Experience for Undergraduates
this honor is well deserved. The
full citation can be found on pages
42-44 of the awards session book-
let.
the keynote speaker and received a
lifetime achievement award. Pro-
Commonwealth of Virginia’s
at Virginia’s public and private
colleges and universities. More
New Publication. Among the
James Tanton, a recent new arrival
in our section. Currently a visiting
mathematician in the MAA office
in Washington, Tanton is well
known for his work with mathe-
matics circles, among other things.
He was an invited speaker at our
spring 2005 section meeting.
ending after the spring meeting,
we would like to take this oppor-
tunity to say a few thank yous. In
our work for the section, we have
seen the dedicated and creative
contributions of the officers. They
plan and put on section meetings,
organize student activities and the
section NExT program, communi-
section webpage and newsletter,
ministrative affairs of our organi-
zation. We are grateful for all of
their efforts, and for the friendship
and collegiality we have shared.
In addition, we would like to say
thank you to all of our members.
It has been a privilege and an hon-
or to serve you and the MD/DC/
VA Section of the MAA. We
hope to see you at many future
meetings and to serve our commu-
nity alongside you.
Plan now for the Fall Meeting at Hampton-Sidney College and
Longwood University, November 1 - 2, 2013!
vide participants with an overview of
classroom voting pedagogy in a wide
range of college mathematics courses.
We will discuss the logistics of class-
room voting as well as recent research
on this type of pedagogy. We will
also share our thoughts on writing
effective voting questions. Partici-
a voting demonstration, explore an
online library of over 2300 classroom
voting questions, and prepare a lesson
with voting questions for use in one
of their own courses. Biographical Sketchs: Jean
McGivney-Burelle is an Associate
of Education at the University of
Hartford. She received her M.S. from
Northeastern University and her
necticut. Her research interests in-
volve investigating how to use tech-
nology to improve the teaching and
learning of mathematics in secondary
and post-secondary classrooms. She
-funded Project MathVote.
Frederick, Maryland. She uses class-
room voting in many of her courses
and she is also interested in connec-
tions between mathematics and mu-
sic. Ann earned her Ph.D. in mathe-
matics from the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity. She also serves as senior per-
sonnel on the NSF-funded Project
MathVote.
Banquet Address: Knights, Knaves, Normals and My Nephew
Jason Rosenhouse
truthtellers have a long history, but
they were elevated to a high art by
Raymond Smullyan. In books like
What is the Name of This Book?, The
Lady or the Tiger and Forever Unde-
cided, Smullyan shows how elemen-
tary logic problems can lead the read-
er gradually towards sophisticated
first encountered Smullyan's writing
have had a major influence on me. I
was recently invited to edit a tribute
volume in his honor, and my work on
this project afforded a welcome op-
portunity to reread his numerous
books. In this talk we shall discuss
some elementary features of these
sorts of puzzles, develop a basic theo-
ry for thinking about them, and even-
tually build up their use for explain-
ing difficult ideas in logic. Most of
the talk will be readily accessible to
students.
mouth College in 2000, and is cur-
rently an associate professor of math-
ematics at JMU. He is the author of
the books The Monty Hall Problem:
The Remarkable Story of Math's Most
Contentious Brainteaser, and Among
Anti-Evolutionist Frontline. With
Taking Sudoku Seriously: The Math
Behind the World's Most Popular
Pencil Puzzle. All three books were
published by Oxford University Press.
When not doing mathematics, he en-
joys playing chess and reading locked
room mysteries.
matics Department at the German-
town Campus of Montgomery Col-
lege. He earned his bachelor’s degree
in Mathematics and Physics – Sec-
ondary Education from the University
of Northern Iowa and completed a
master’s degree in mathematics there.
In addition, he spent two years in the
PhD program in Mathematics at Dart-
mouth College. In 2011 he won the
Montgomery College Outstanding
recognized by a NISOD Excellence
Award and as the Maryland Professor
of the Year. His interests include
mathematics education, the language
torcycling.
proofs in mathematics to some of the
most important modern results, math-
ematicians have sought to demon-
strate that some things cannot be
done. We will consider such proofs
from pre-Euclid to post-Gödel, with a
few stops in between. However, in-
stead of simply focusing on the re-
sults themselves, we will consider the
language used in these proofs. The
way we choose to describe mathemat-
ics can have a profound impact on our
relationship to the content and can
affect how non-mathematicians view
result in question is a proof of impos-
sibility.
Invited Address: Surviving an Outbreak of Zombiism
Robert Allen
have played an important role in the
American horror film genre. Have
you ever wondered if a zombie apoca-
lypse is realistic and/or inevitable?
Can we use mathematics to help us
fight off such an apocalypse?
In this talk I will discuss a series of
models for the spread of a zombie
infection through a human population.
These models are based on the stand-
ard SIR model, modified to introduce
various coping techniques as well as
dynamical behavior. Although an out-
break of zombiism is "fictional", I
will discuss how mathematics is used
to study the spread of an infectious
disease, and the work can be translat-
ed to studying "real" diseases such as
cholera, chicken pox, H1N1, and
HIV, for example.
ics at the University of Wisconsin-La
Crosse. He received his B.S. in Com-
puter Science from the University of
Virginia in 1994. After working as a
software engineer in the Washington
D.C. area, he received his B.S. in
mathematics from George Mason
sity of Virginia, and finally his Ph.D.
Solution to Tile Sudoku: Flip vertical
from George Mason University (quite
a tennis match.) His research interests
range from operator theory to mathe-
matical biology, and everything in
between. In 2012 he was awarded the
Outstanding Professor of the Year.
When not working with students, he
can be found singing karaoke, playing
video games, or trying out new reci-
pes.
Huneke was hired in 2012 to be-
come the first Marvin Rosenblum
Professor of Mathematics, a newly
endowed position. A well-known
researcher in commutative algebra,
State University. Beginning fall
chair, as the department begins a
planned period of growth over the
next half dozen years.
Gualdani joined the Department
tant Professor of Mathemat-
ics. Professor Gualdani received
in Germany in 2005. She was a
Research Assistant Professor at the
University of Texas at Austin. Her
research interests lie in the inter-
section of Applied Mathematics,
Statistics and Probability, with
Sciences, Statistical Mechanics
linear partial differential equations
and their qualitative behavior.
ure Track hire, Prince Chidyag-
wai, from a postdoc at Temple
University.
Spring Puzzle: Tile Sudoku — Laura Taalman
Rules: Fill in the 10x10 grid with the numbers 1-5 so that
each pentomino region contains 1-5 exactly once, and each row
and column contains 1-5 exactly *twice*. To see the solution go
to page 5.
MAA-AMS Joint Mathematics Meetings
2015: San Antonio, TX - January 10-13
2016: Seattle, WA - January 6-9
2017: Atlanta, GA - January 4-7
2018: San Diego, CA - January 10-13
2019: Baltimore, MD - January 16-19
Awards
of Randolph-Macon College
tion for Virginia (SCHEV) Out-
standing Faculty Awards for 2013.
These awards recognize those fac-
ulty who make a difference
through their teaching, research
and universities. Details can be
found at: http://www.schev.edu/
land Professor of the Year by the
Carnegie Foundation for the Ad-
vancement of Teaching and the
Council for the Advancement and
Support of Education. http://
Mathematics 2012, edited by
Mircea Pitici (Princeton Univ.
two-part series, coauthored with
Math Horizons in Sept. and Nov.
2011. The title of the combined
article is "Mathematics Meets Pho-
tography: The Viewable Sphere".
Abstract Analysis," appeared this
graduate course in analysis, with
the first half on measure theory
and the second on functional anal-
ysis. He started writing this book
when he taught such a course dur-
ing his last year at George Wash-
ington University. The book was
published by the American Mathe-
matical Society and is referenced
at http://www.ams.org/bookstore?
141
and related with knots distributive
structures; Thirteen Gdansk Lec-
tures,” Gdansk University Press,
in Polish, June 2012.
Lectures on Knot Theory: Selected
Lectures presented at the Ad-
vanced School and Conference on
Knot Theory and its Applications
to Physics and Biology,” ICTP,
Trieste, Italy, 11 - 29 May 2009,
World Scientific, Series on Knots
and Everything - Vol. 46, 2012.
http://www.amazon.com/
Introductory-Lectures-Knot-
Theory-Applications/
dp/9814307998/
was awarded a five year CAREER
award from the National Science
Foundation. She works in proba-
bility. She is the third of our
younger faculty to have been re-
cently awarded prestigious early
Sloan Foundation fellowships.
to see if this year's Putnam exam
team can match the results from
last year, when the team received
honorable mention as one of the
top 10 teams, led by third year stu-
dent Fei Song. She was one of the
top 23 individuals, and was the
winner of the Elizabeth Lowell
Putnam prize which is "awarded
periodically to a woman whose
performance on the Competition
itorious".
of Mathematical Sciences by the
President of Poland,
Bronislaw Komorowski. The
Presidential Palace in Warsaw.
est title, officially conferred by the
President of Poland. http://
REER grant. This is the most pres-
tigious award in support of junior
faculty who exemplify the role of
teacher-scholars through outstand-
and research within the context of
the mission of their organiza-
tions. This is the first such award
in our department history.
University of Virginia Computer
members were third-year Neal
Milstein and second-year Derek
Morris, both computer science
ond-year College of Arts & Sci-
ences student Carson Wang. In
July 2013, the group will travel to
St. Petersburg, Russia, along with
their faculty coach, Aaron Bloom-
field, an assistant professor of
computer science, to compete
tries. Derek Morris who is one of
the team members is the son of
Walter Morris, a faculty in the
Department of Mathematics at
ing retirement by Jim Roche after
serving for 30 years at Loyola
University.
in early March at University of
Virginia. Other recent retirees
include Leonard Scott, Barbara
MacCluer, and Kevin McCrim-
gy, held at University of Virginia
in June 2012, had 70 participants
and included speakers from a half
dozen different countries.
Sonia Kovalevsky mathematics
11th. Hood hosted 50 students from
Frederick County high schools.
part in hands-on mathematics
workshops, learning about Sonia
who use mathematics in their ca-
reers.
symposium and special session
gress of Mathematics Krakow, Po-
land, July 2-7, 2012. Alexandroff
Readings International Topologi-
during March 17-18, 2012 which
was attended by 373 people in-
cluding professionals and stu-
the local organizer of this confer-
ence. Also an Undergraduate
2013 (http://home.gwu.edu/~rong/
by Professors Svetlana Roudenko
Washington University, Professor
and Chi-Kwong Li of the College
of William and Mary. The Key-
note Speaker was Dr. Michelle
Girvan, Institute for Research in
Electronics and Applied Physics
from University of Maryland .
James Madison University on
Saturday, September 28, 2013.
ference promoting undergraduate
dergraduate research talks, invited
dents.
Team honored for ‘revolutionizing the science of cryptography.’
MIT professors Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali have won the Association for Computing Machinery’s A.M. Turing
Award for their pioneering work in the fields of cryptography and complexity theory. The two developed new mecha-
nisms for how information is encrypted and secured, work that is widely applicable today in communications protocols,
Internet transactions and cloud computing. They also made fundamental advances in the theory of computational com-
plexity, an area that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty. (For full story
for the sale of MAA books at section
meetings. This greatly expands your op-
portunity to purchase MAA titles at the
greatly discounted section book sale pric-
es. Although we always encourage your
attendance at Section meetings, the new
procedures allow those who cannot attend
the opportunity to participate in the book
sale. Here’s how it works:
Place your order through the online MAA
Store (http://maa-
store.hostedbywebstore.com) anytime
via email. Enter this code at check-out to
receive the Section discount of 35% be-
low list price.
may also use your Amazon account.
You may also place orders at the Section
meeting on April 13th using either the new
online procedures, or the traditional paper
order form method that we’ve used in the
past.
recent MAA titles at the Section meeting.
Stop by and browse at your leisure. And
as a special incentive, anyone placing an
order at the Section meeting may choose
a complimentary book from among the
older titles in our inventory.
Consider supporting the Section by taking
advantage of the MAA Book Sale in a
Box. You receive a great discount, and
the Section receives a commission from
the sales. Those funds support, in part,
various student activities at Section meet-
ings.
land-District of Columbia-Virginia
ing in 1915. While there is some disa-
greement about which Section was
first, we were probably fifth or sixth,
and certainly the first section outside
the midwest. No matter, we were right
in there in the beginning. The Section
was authorized at the second annual
meeting of the MAA in December,
1916 and held its first section meeting
at Johns Hopkins University on
March 3, 1917. We don't want to miss
celebrating our centennial during the
2016-17 academic year!
ad-hoc Section History Committee,
old Section records, searching back
issues of the Monthly, and talking
with folks, looking for items to tell
our story. It's slow going, but we're
beginning to make a little progress.
We have, for example, pretty com-
plete lists of past Section meeting
sites along with some information on
highlights of the meetings. In some
cases, we have complete programs, in
others, only names of invited speakers
along with titles of their talks, and for
many meetings, we don't know much
at all—at least not yet.
Much of what we've found is fairly
routine stuff related to the everyday
running of the Section--
correspondence among Section lead-
invited speakers, sign-in lists of meet-
ing attendees, and the like. But every
so often, something jumps out. Surely,
there is more to that story! One exam-
ple is a letter admonishing the Section
for soliciting funds in another sec-
tion's territory to support our contest
for high school students. It turns out
we were completely innocent, but
finding that letter led to a much larger
story of the Section's High School
Mathematics Contest, begun in the
early 1950s, and the involvement of
the Section in establishing what is
now the American Mathematical
your Section? One thing particularly
missing is the stories of the people
who have been instrumental in build-
ing the Section over our almost 100
years. We encourage you to look at
your own department and institution
history for connections with the Sec-
tion. Any tidbit, no matter how small,
is welcome. Keep on the lookout for
early meeting programs, newsletters,
was recovered from the basements of
various math buildings.)
your own stories. What got you first
involved in the Section? Is there a
meeting or talk that stands out in your
mind? Have you made lasting connec-
tions with Section colleagues? How
has involvement in the Section con-
tributed to your professional life?
What might the Section do to better
promote mathematics in our region?
You can contribute your stories in
several ways. Caren Diefenderfer and
others will be conducting interviews
at the Salisbury Section Meeting. (It's
painless!) We also encourage you to
write up some of your stories, and
post them on the Section History Blog
(http://
mddcvasectionhistory.blogspot.com).
very straightforward. You can also
comment on previous postings.
either directly or via email.
We look forward to your contribution
and participation in this History pro-
ject. What's your story?
Your Section History Committee,
Diefenderfer, Betty Mayfield, Amy
Shell-Gellasch, and Jon Scott
Section History Project
Receipts Expenses
PayPal processing fee $111.20
General Account Balance, March 7, 2013 $5,198.14
John G. Milcetich Memorial Student Achievement Fund, August 22, 2012 $1,543.13
Receipts Expenses
MAA book sales, Fall 2012 $65.57
Contributions, Fall 2012 $125.00
Total Receipts $191.42 Total Expenses $503.10
John G. Milcetich Memorial Student Achievement Fund, March 7, 2013 $1,231.45
Section NExT Fund Balance, August 22, 2012 $2,015.26
Receipts Expenses
Books for Section NExT Fellows $284.76
Total Receipts $810.00 Total Expenses $738.76
Section NExT Fund Balance, March 7,2013 $2,086.50
Project NExT Fund Balance, August 22, 2012 $290.00
Receipts Expenses
Brian Lins
Virginia Military Institute 540-464-7495 JosephDS@vmi.edu
Chair-Elect - David Shoenthal
Roanoke College 540-375-4933 taylor@roanoke.edu
American University 202-885-3122 kalman@american.edu
Past Governor - Bud Brown
Virginia Tech 540-231-6950 brown@math.vt.edu
Hampden-Sydney College 434-223-6207 rkoether@hsc.edu
Hampden-Sydney College 434-223-6264 blins@hsc.edu
Virginia State University 804-524-1205 dhaile@vsu.edu
Director of Member Communication - Bryan Faulkner (3 year term ending 2015)
Ferrum College 540-365-4584 bfaulkner@ferrum.edu
Student Activities Coordinator - Jennifer Bergner (3 year term ending 2015)
Salisbury University 410-677-5429 jabergner@salisbury.edu
New Faculty Coordinator (Section NExT) - Jill Dunham (2 year term ending 2014)
Hood College 301-696-3982 dunham@hood.edu
At Large Executive Committee Member - Leigh Lunsford (2 year term ending 2013)
Longwood University 434-395-2189 lunsfordml@longwood.edu
At Large Executive Committee Member - Meagan Herald (2 year term ending 2014)
Virginia Military Institute 540-464-7684 HeraldMC@vmi.edu
Webmaster - Don Spickler (3 year term ending 2013)
Salisbury University 410-543-6148 despickler@salisbury.edu