Spring 2013 Newsletter (pdf) - MAA Sections - Mathematical ...

Greetings from the 2012-2013 MAA SouthernCalifornia-Nevada Section ChairMin-Lin Lo, California State University – San BernardinoMAA Southern California-Nevada Section ChairAfter almost six months of waiting since our Fall Meeting, our Spring Meeting is finallyhere to recharge us!Our Section Chair, Min-Lin Lo,is a math prof and advisor tothe Math Club at Cal StateSan Bernardino.We had a wonderful meeting on a gorgeous day atCal State Long Beach last fall. Our attendeesenjoyed the excellent talks given by Guershon Harelfrom UCSD (if you were there, you know why thereis a giraffe on this page), SarahEichhorn from UCI (we got tosimulate a computer usingmatch boxes), Daphne Liufrom CSULA (we learnedabout rainbow coloring), andMatt DeLong, who is a visitingprofessor at Harvey MuddCollege this year (we heard thestory of Farmer Ted’s ChickenCoop), with topics on matheducation, game theory, graphtheory, and undergraduate research problems,respectively. There were also interesting talks givenby students and faculty from our section in thecontributed paper sessions. Graduate students wereable to get help from our section’s faculty on their CVsand job application materials. There were also couponswith huge MAA student membership discountsavailable that day. If you were not able to attend our meeting last fall, I know readingabout it here is probably making you regret that you missed all that fun. No worries,you’ll have another chance this spring Saturday, April 20, at the University of San Diego!Our program committee has invited some great speakers for the Spring Section Meeting.• Ravi Vakil, Stanford University (MAA Polya Lecturer), will speak on “TheMathematics of Doodling.”• Kathryn Leonard, CSUCI (recipient of the 2011 MAA Alder Teaching Award),will present “Image Modeling with Industry and Undergraduates.”• Chris Rasmussen, San Diego State (Department of Mathematics and Center forResearch in Mathematics and Science Education) will discuss “Who Chooses Not toPersist in Calculus and Why?”• Francis Su, Harvey Mudd College (recipient of our 2012 Section Teaching Awardand of the 2013 MAA Haimo Teaching Award) will present “Combinatorial FixedPoint Theorems.”Continued, next page …2