2006 Joint Meeting with Rocky Mountain Section

(April 7-8, Mesa State College, Grand Junction, Colorado)

Wrap-up

It was good to get together again with our Rocky Mountain friends in April. Cathy Bonan-Hamada and her helpers at Mesa State College put together a first rate program including invited addresses by Robin Wilson on sudoku, Allen Schwenk on nontransitive dice, and Bryan Shader shared the mathematical appetizers he serves his majors. The banquet address was served up by Steven Rudich who gave a thorough overview of the P vs NP problem.

Intermountain mathematicians made significant contributions - of 57 abstracts I counted 26 from Intermountain schools, with 15 of those being from students.

At the banquet Intermountain members Carolyn Connell, Jim Cannon, Kent Kidman and yours truly received 25 year membership certificates and Don Robinson was recognized for the fifty year membership certificate he received last year. Most significantly, Tyler Jarvis of BYU was awarded the 2006 Intermountain Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, and he becomes our nominee for the national, Haimo, Award, to be awarded at Mathfest in Knoxville in August.

At our business meeting:

-We elected Troy Goodsell of BYU-Idaho as 1st Vice Chair of our section.

-We made preliminary plans for our 2007 meeting at the University of Utah. The tentative date for that meeting is March 23-4.

-It was agreed that to adopt the policy that the selection committee for the outstanding teaching award should consist of two members, one each from the schools of the two immediate previous winners of that award and that nominees from those two schools would be ineligible for the award. This will solve the problem of conflicts of interest and help the award to rotate. According to that policy, nominees from Weber and BYU will not be ineligible for the 2007 award. It was also agreed that in the event that the only nominees were from ineligible schools, the policy will be relaxed so that we can have a winner.

-During the meeting we discussed the state math standards for public schools and it was decided that an MAA sponsored interest group would be useful to help coordinate such discussion throughout the intermountain region. David Wright volunteered to set up such a process and a website, MAA-mathtalk, already exists. Have a look and please participate at

http://mail01.math.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/maa-mathtalk

Lastly I should note that as of the April meeting I’m no longer chair. Please give a big welcome and lots of support to Chris Merrin, the new Intermountain Section chair.

See you at the U in 2007.

Lee Badger

Immediate Past Chair