Category Archives: AMATYC

Posts relating to AMATYC and the annual conference

ArizMATYC’s Scholarship for the National AMATYC Conference

ArizMATYC is awarding a scholarship to cover an AMATYC member early registration fee for the upcoming AMATYC Conference, to be held on November 8 – 11 in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Any ArizMATYC member is eligible, but preference will be given to ArizMATYC members who have never attended an AMATYC conference.

To apply or nominate someone for this scholarship, please follow this link* and submit the application prior to the deadline of Friday, August 3, 2012.

The recipient of the scholarship will be required to choose one thing learned at the AMATYC Conference and present it in a session at the upcoming spring ArizMATYC Conference.

Message from the Southwest Vice President

I just returned from the spring board meeting of the AMATYC Board.  The most exciting thing to tell you is that the board has approved the Southwest Regional Meeting to take place in the summer of 2013.  It will be a great deal of work, but I know this region is up for it.  This gives all of us an opportunity to show the other regions how well we can host a meeting.  Your affiliate president will be contacting you with more information.

There were many other ideas and information discussed at the meeting.  One of the information items that was presented is that a few of the AMATYC committees have openings for regional representatives.  I would like to have a southwest representative on all of the committees, so if you are on one of these committees, or are interested in joining these committees, and would like to represent the southwest region, please contact the chair of the following committees:

In addition, several task forces were created during the meeting.  If you are interested in serving on one of these task forces, please let me know and I will forward your name to Jim Roznowski.  He will contact you if there are still openings on the task force.  The task forces are:

  • 40th Anniversary Planning
  • Live streaming of annual conference sessions Review of Standards – Beyond Crossroads Updating the guidelines on academic preparation

In addition, there is a Statistics pre-session on Wednesday, November 7, in Jacksonville, Fl.  There is no cost for the pre-session, but you will have to provide all travel costs.

Also, approved at this meeting was a pre-session on research in two-year mathematics programs, hosted by the RMETYC committee also on November 7.  Look for more information on this from April Strom.

I am excited to be a part of this region.  Please let me know if you need anything from me.

 Kathryn Kozak, VP of the Southwest Region of AMATYC

AMATYC Foundation Grants for ICME-12

The AMATYC Foundation will be accepting applications for grants to attend the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-12) to be held in Seoul, South Korea from July 8 to July 15, 2012.  The deadline for applications to receive one of the $400 grants is March 1.  Successful applicants will be notified by March 15.

 To apply you may complete the attached application form or submit an online version of the form available at www.amatyc.org.

Position Statement on Proctored Testing

As many of you know, AMATYC puts out position statements on certain topics. The Innovative Teaching and Learning Committee (ITLC) has developed a position statement on proctoring testing. There will be a forum on this topic at the AMATYC Annual Conference in Jacksonville, FL in November. Then it will go to the Delegate Assembly at that meeting. If you have any input on this, you can send it to the ITLC committee, attend the forum, or email me. You can find the position paper at

https://sites.google.com/site/amatycitlc/home/proctored-testing

Let me know if you have any comments.

Kathryn (Kate) Kozak (Kathryn.Kozak@COCONINO.EDU)
VP of Southwest Region

Call for Presenters at AMATYC 2012 in Jacksonville

Now that the semester is winding down, you are probably evaluating what worked and what did not work in your classes. You must have found something that you would like to share next year at the AMATYC conference in Jacksonville.

You can submit a proposal at the AMATYC website at the following page.

The deadline for submitting a proposal is February 1, 2012.

If you are planning to present in Jacksonville, why not consider a dry run at the Spring ArizMATYC meeting in Tucson on March 30 through April 2. The presenter application is available online at

AMATYC 2011 in Austin

I got back from Austin late on Sunday afternoon and I was happy to be home. That is not to say that the conference in Austin was not good…only that I was happy to be in my own house.

AMATYC’s annual conference is always excellent. Like most escort kızlar of you, I go to steal ideas from others. If I can find five new things to try, the conference is a success for me. I am still sorting through the multitude of websites that were distributed at the conference and I’ll post the best ones later. I gave a presentation on “A Different Strategy for Solving Optimization Problems in Calculus” that you can view online. In the next few weeks, you’ll be able to see many of the resources referenced at the conference at the Proceedings page of AMATYC’s website.

There is one curious thing that most attendees notice when attending the exhibit hall. Between sessions, everyone generally cruises the hall for the various goodies exhibitors like McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Pearson, and Hawkes Systems set out. When you don’t have time to grab a quick bite, popcorn is often the key to conference survival!

At the last few conferences, the Hawkes booth has stood out from all of the rest. It is not necessarily the product, but the people who sell the product. The representatives from Hawkes are generally young, attractive women (there was also a young, attractive man this year!). This begs the queastion, “Is staffing a conference booth with young, attractive people a good strategy?”

Questions like these have recently been the subject of several books:

  • Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom, Catherine Hakim, Basic Books, 2011
  • Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Princeton University Press, 2011

The author of the second book, Daniel Hamermesh, is an economist at of all places…the University of Texas at Austin. Although I have not read his book yet, he has a paper on the subject that is publically available, “Beauty is the Promise of Happiness”? There is a lot of good statistics in this paper for all of you stat junkies. The book has also been reviewed by several magazines.

This book has even generated an appearance last night on the Daily Show.

Warning: Some bad taste in the clip below.

 

The author also answered questions from readers of the Freakonomics website recently.

Hamermesh has even examined the effect of beauty in the classsroom.

This makes for fascinating reading…next time you visit the Hawkes booth at  a conference, ask them how they are doing.