Governor’s Report

January, 2008

Herbert E. Kasube

Bradley University

hkasube@bradley.edu

The Board of Governors met on January 5, 2008, in San Diego. In President Gallian’s report it was noted that the Illinois Section would be sponsoring a Project NExT Fellow. On a related note, the MAA has received the Illinois Section’s contribution for a “brick” at the Carriage House.  The first dedicated bricks have been laid with more to follow. Jim Tattersall reported that attendance at national meetings has been strong, with both New Orleans and San Jose setting records in 2007.

John Kenelly reported that the MAA’s finances continue to be strong.

Staff changes at MAA – Hal Nesbitt has left MAA.  He has been replaced by two individuals – Kathy DeAngelo (kdeangelo@maa.org ) and Nathan Ray (nray@maa.org ).  Kathy and Nathan will forward any email announcements that you wish to send.

It was noted that nominations continue to be sparse for the Alder and Haimo Teaching Awards.

A major portion of the Board of Governors Meeting was spent discussing the recommendations of the Working Group on Governance. (Part of Strategic Planning Cycle II).  Carl Cowen presented a number of items, some of which required action, some did not and still others will require changes to the MAA Bylaws. Some significant action items …

• Maintain the current committee structure.
• Revise committee terms to be 3 years and one month so as to provide for overlap at January meetings.
• Each ad hoc committee must have a termination date.
• Committees should submit reports to the Board of Governors through their respective Council Chairs.
• Council Chairs serve on Board of Governors (Bylaws change needed.)

These recommendations were made after substantial feedback from Focus Groups.

The Working Group on Students (also Cycle II) presented its final report. The MAA is already doing a very good job serving students, but some weaknesses were noted. “The MAA needs to improve the coherence of organizational structure pertaining to students. … needs to do a better job advertising and ‘branding’ the goods and services it already provides.” President Gallian has set a goal of 1000 student attendees at JMM in 2015.  “Graduate students of mathematics need some serious attention by the MAA.” It was suggested that MAA provide more information and resources to student chapter advisors. These might include:

• Video loaning library of math-related videos;
• List of speakers and funds to support travel;
• Recognition certificates for students and advisors;
• “In-a-box” activities (games);
• A booklet of success stories;
• Suggestions for mathematical book clubs

Other recommendations include:

• Publishing regular Student Chapter News in FOCUS;
• An electronic student newsletter;
• Workshops for graduate teaching assistants at national or sectional meetings on issues involving teaching.

Cycle III of Strategic Planning will involve S.T.EM. , Sections and Meetings.  Reports will be due at MathFest 2009. Watch for focus groups and/or questionnaires in the near future.  

The Section Officers meeting in San Diego had a relatively small turnout and heard much of what was said at the Board of Governors.  There are two new films available to show at Section Meetings – “The π versus e Debate” and “Hard Problems”. The MAA office will (soon) be able to host Section websites. Breakout sessions began discussion of Cycle III – Meetings.  The Strategic Planning Working Group on Sections distributed a handout on preparing for a discussion at the Section Officers Meeting at MathFest 2008. We were reminded that Section financial reports are due January 30.

The following questions from the Strategic Planning Working Group on Sections were discussed:

• What undergraduate competition does your section have? Would your Section support a national competition such as Jeopardy? Could you use the current competition to identify a team for a national competition for undergraduate students?
• Is your Section too large or too small to support an effective regional program?  What is an ideal number of of MAA members in a Section?
• How does the size of your Section’s region affect the Section? What is an ideal extent of a Section’s geographic region?
• What would keep you up at night if you were the sole person responsible for your Section?

As you may expect, the answers to these questions varied greatly.

Reminder:  upcoming national meetings …

MathFest 2008  Madison, Wisconsin  July 31 – August 2

Joint Mathematics Meetings 2009  Washington, D.C.  January 5-8, 2009

Please Note: These dates for the 2009 Joint Meetings are a change from the previous dates of January 7-10