Ernie Solheid Wins MAA Meritorious Service Award
Ernie Solheid, professor of mathematics at California State University, Fullerton, was awarded the MAA Certificate of Meritorious Service Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta. The Southern California-Nevada Section nominated Ernie for this prestigious award in recognition of his outstanding work as Section Meetings Coordinator during the past seven years. In nominating Ernie, Section Governor Art Benjamin, on behalf of the Southern California-Nevada Section Board of Officers, wrote:
Ernie Solheid has been the Meetings Coordinator of the Southern California-Nevada Section for seven years and has done an excellent job in the selection of sites for the spring and fall meetings of the Section. The organization of the meetings has been impeccable. Moreover, Ernie has worked Texas Instruments and other vendors to provide prizes for the best posters presented by our undergraduates at the spring meeting of the Section. We are very fortunate to have Ernie in this position. Mario Martelli, past Governor, Secretary-Treasurer, and Program Chair of the Section, suggested Ernie for the position when Barbara Beechler, who had been Secretary-Treasurer, Meetings Coordinator, and Newsletter Editor for many years, stepped down from all three duties for health reasons. Barbara was very impressed by Ernie's work. She told Mario that recruiting Ernie as Meetings Coordinator was one of the best services he ever had done for the section!
Mario concurs with Barbara's assessment, saying, "I strongly believe that she was right on that one. Ernie has done a great job as Meetings Coordinator. His organizational skills and his dedication to the Section have been phenomenal."
Ernie responded to receiving the Certificate of Meritorious Service as follows.
I would like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Southern California-Nevada Section of the MAA for this very special recognition. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work alongside them and to participate in the Section's activities for the past several years. I am most honored to receive the Certificate of Meritorious Service for the Section.
Ernie reports that the most enjoyable part of his job as Meetings Coordinator is "meeting and interacting with such a wide range of people at all the different schools in the area. The hardest part of the job is getting up early enough on meeting dates to be at the meeting site by 6:30 a.m., particularly when there's an hour or more drive." Ernie continues to serve as Meetings Coordinator for the Southern California-Nevada Section, and currently is busy with preparations for the 2005 Spring Meeting Saturday, March 5, at USC.
Ernie earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and joined the Cal State Fullerton faculty in 1988. Since 1998, the same year in which he began his service as MAA Meetings Coordinator, he has served as CSUF campus coordinator for the California State University system-wide Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, an NSF funded program. His mathematical research interests include combinatorics, graph theory, and linear algebra. He most enjoys teaching courses that focus on mathematical proof, including a Strategies of Proof course and various upper-division pure mathematics courses. He also coordinates the mathematics department's precalculus program.
Past winners of the MAA Meritorious Service Award from our section include Alice King, then of Cal Poly Pomona (1991); Barbara Beechler, then of Pitzer College (1995); and Mario Martelli, then of Cal State Fullerton and now of Claremont McKenna College (2000). MAA sections are invited to nominate one of their members for the Meritorious Service Award only once every five years.
What's (SoCalNev Section) NExT?
Florence Newberger, CSU Long Beach
Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) is an MAA program for new and recent PhDs in the mathematical sciences that addresses the full range of faculty responsibilities, including teaching, scholarly activities, and service. Since its inception in 1994, the national Project NExT program has grown tremendously, and sections of the MAA have been encouraged to organize regional NExT programs.
SoCalNev NExT is now recruiting applicants to participate in activities at the 2005 Spring Meeting, to be held Saturday, March 5, at USC. These activities involve practical information about implementing effective pedagogical and professional strategies, including topics such as teaching methods, directing undergraduate research, and writing grant proposals. In addition, SoCalNev NExT provides a venue in which its participants can meet informally and discuss issues relevant to new faculty.
The program will accept applications from faculty with master's degrees or PhDs who are within the first three years of beginning full-time employment with significant teaching responsibilities at the community college, college, or university level. For more information, including a link to the on-line application and a list of past activities, please visit http://www.maa.org/socal and follow the link to SoCalNev NExT.
Deadline for applications: Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Save these dates for future MAA meetings!
Summer 2005, Albuquerque, NM, August 4-6
Winter 2006, San Antonio, TX, January 12-15
Summer 2006, Knoxville, TN, August 10-12
Winter 2007, New Orleans, LA, January 4-7
Summer 2007, San Jose, CA, August 3-5
Winter 2008, San Diego, CA, January 6-9
Summer 2008, Madison, WI, July 31-Aug. 2
Winter 2009, Washington, DC, January 7-10
Winter 2010, San Francisco, CA, January 6-9
Winter 2011, New Orleans, LA, January 5-8
Congratulations to 25- and 50-Year MAA Members!
Congratulations to the following members of the Southern California-Nevada Section who are celebrating their 50th year as members of the MAA.
Seymour Bachmuth, Santa Barbara
Leonard Fountain, San Diego
Thomas Ferguson, Los Angeles
Adil Yaqub, Santa Barbara
Congratulations also to the following members of our section who have been MAA members for 25 years.
Hartwig Arenstorf, Ocotillo
Majid Azimi, San Diego
Howard Beckwith, Long Beach
Lee Clancy, Huntington Beach
Harriet Edwards, Brea
Kathy Fink, Camarillo
Ann Forkeotes, Woodland Hills
Scott Hensley, Fullerton
Paul Kraght, San Dimas
Dorothy McGarry, Los Angeles
Frank Miles, Torrance
Christina Plett, Cypress
Oren Patashnik, San Diego
Shahriar Shahriari, Claremont
David Senensieb, Calabasas
Edward Thurber, Fullerton
Marc Thomas, Bakersfield
Lee Whitt, Del Mar
Katherine Yoshiwara, Woodland Hills
Section Holds First-ever Meeting in Las Vegas
To celebrate the addition of Southern Nevada to the section, the MAA Southern California-Nevada Section held its 2004 Fall Meeting Sat.-Sun., Oct. 9-10, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The meeting featured an impressive line-up of invited speakers, a terrific mathematical magic show, a record number of contributed papers, and, of course, a golden opportunity for meeting attendees to carry out applied mathematical research in probability. Meeting attendees included many students from UNLV, Bakersfield College, Pepperdine University, and California Lutheran University.
Speakers included 2004 Section Distinguished Teaching Award winner Rebecca Head of Bakersfield College, who gave an extremely enjoyable talk on the mathematics of the acoustic guitar; MAA President Ron Graham of UC San Diego on a possible instance of combinatorial reasoning in a long lost Archimedes manuscript; Section Governor Art Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College on the mathematics of the Knock 'Em Down dice game; and visitors Persi Diaconis and Susan Holmes of Stanford University on connections between card-shuffling and the Mandelbrot set and on teaching probability with paradoxes, respectively. On Saturday evening, magicians Allan Ackerman of UNLV, Joe Chavez of Cal State San Bernardino, and Art Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College wowed a very appreciative and enthusiastic crowd with their mathematical magic shows. Twenty contributed papers by 28 authors were given during five well-attended parallel sessions on Sunday morning. MAA Book Sale organizers Michael Hoffman and Richard Katz of California State University, Los Angeles, made their most valiant effort ever in bringing the Book Sale, with its full complement of MAA books, to Las Vegas. Local organizer was Michelle Schultz of UNLV.
Southern California-Nevada Section to Meet March 5, 2005, at USC
After venturing to brand new territory at the frontiers of our section for the 2004 Fall Meeting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, we return to the population center of the Southern California-Nevada Section for the 2005 Spring Meeting at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The Spring Meeting, to be held Saturday, March 5, 2005, at USC, will feature an impressive line-up of dynamic speakers, an exciting array of student posters, and a colorful display of mathematical quilts. It also will include presentation of the 2005 Section Distinguished Teaching Award and recognition of our section's 25- and 50-year MAA members. The MAA Book Sale, featuring several new titles, will be offered throughout the day.
Speakers will include Colin Adams of Williams College, Massachusetts, who, masquerading as his brother-in-law, real estate salesman Mel Slugbate, will try to interest us in some hot property in hyperbolic space. Helmer Aslaksen of the National University of Singapore will discuss "Heavenly Mathematics," the mathematics of astronomy and calendars. Local speakers include Alice Silverberg of UC Irvine on cryptography and Francis Su of Harvey Mudd College on graph theory. We invite and expect scores of students from throughout the section to attend the meeting, with many of them presenting posters during the Student Poster Session. Also on display will be mathematical quilts, designed and constructed by Gwen Fisher of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Gwen's quilts were featured in the January 2005 issue of FOCUS. MAA Book Sale organizers Michael Hoffman and Richard Katz of Cal State Los Angeles will have a larger-than-usual selection of new MAA books, along with almost all of the other titles in the MAA booklist. Local organizers for the Spring Meeting are Section Meetings Coordinator Ernie Solheid of Cal State Fullerton and Section Program Chair Francis Bonahon of USC.
The Southern California-Nevada Section NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) will run a parallel program of panel discussions and workshops for beginning community college, college, and university faculty members who have been accepted into Section NExT.
Deadlines for 2005 Spring Meeting:
Application for Section NExT: Tues., Feb. 22, 2005
Title and abstract for student poster: Thurs., Feb. 24, 2005
Registration for Spring Meeting: Fri., Feb. 25, 2005
Newsletter Goes Electronic
At the Spring 2004 business meeting, the MAA Southern California-Nevada Section unanimously approved a motion to distribute the section newsletter electronically, beginning with the February 2005 issue. The current newsletter is available at the Southern California-Nevada Section website (http://www.maa.org/socal), where you may view it online or download it as a pdf file.
If you wish to continue to receive a paper copy of the newsletter, please send your mailing address to janet_beery@redlands.edu or
Janet Beery, MAA Newsletter Editor
Department of Mathematics, University of Redlands
1200 E. Colton Ave., Redlands, CA 92373
If you wish to be notified electronically of the availability of new newsletters (and of other important section news), we must have your e-mail address. If you received e-mail announcing the availability of the February 2005 section newsletter, then we have it! Otherwise, please send your e-mail address to janet_beery@redlands.edu
To list your e-mail address in the Combined Membership List (CML) of the AMS and MAA, contact AMS Customer Services at cml-info@ams.org or 800-321-4267. To change an e-mail address listed in the CML, visit https://www.ams.org/cml-update and follow the instructions for updating your information.