On
met from
Kenschaft), Roland Lamberson,
Andy Long, Don Miller, Christopher Proesel (from the
MAA staff), Barry Schiller, Lee Seitleman, Bill
Stone, Marcia Sward, and
Ahlam Tannouri.
The Committee appointed me as the Committee representative to the EM
SIGMAA for the rest of my term (January 2006).
The Committee appointed Barry to write a paragraph about public bus
transportation in
information about the 2004 MathFest, including how to
get from the airport
to hotels by bus inexpensively. Barry agreed. I will relay his
writing
as Committee chair.
The Committee asked me to write to the Meeting organizers reporting that
the session on modeling and natural resources had far more would-be
attendees than the room would accommodate, and suggest that "our"
topics
draw sufficiently so that they should have at least normal sized rooms.
It was estimated that at times "close to 100" people were at this
session;
certainly all chairs were filled and about ten people clustered around the
open door. If we don't inform the organizers, they may not realize the
draw of these topics.
Lee Seitelman asked me to use my email list to
request mathematicians who
might speak with K-12 speakers at the
suggested he send me an email ready to forward to the larger list. He
agreed.
We discussed our webpage, and urged all members and supporters to link
their own website to
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~wdstone/www/EnvironMath/CommEnvMathCoverPage.htm
A google search on
"Environmental Mathematics" yields seven of the ten on
the first page to a group in
first page. Congratulations, Bill! Bill Stone is our
webmaster. He puts
things up easily, but says, "Content is a problem." Please
browse our
website and make further suggestions to Bill.
We also discussed our program to get more mathematicians out into schools
for Earth Day, April 22. Bill does this regularly, and has a few
suggested talks on our website. (Marcia did a superb presentation the
following day based on a national survey about what Americans know about
energy, and it was suggested this is another possibility that keeps the
audience involved. http://www.neetf.org/roper/Roper2002.pdf
Pages 15
and 16 of this document give the quiz she gave us. One of her
startling statistics was that only 17% of Americans are aware that the
average number of miles per gallon has decreased in the past decade.)
We discussed how to get more MAA members involved, and also how
individually to reach out. Bill suggested Admissions departments of your
institutions, and I suggested merely reaching out to math deparments
of
nearby high schools. We could do this via MAA sections and/or NCTM
Affiliates. We could use our own continuing ed
students as links.
Long-term we need regional coordinators as WAM once had. We might link
this activity to Math Awareness Month. We should, of course, recruit
mathematicians from business and industry as well as academics. We did
not discuss how to get regional coordinators but it seems that this is a
logical next step, probably in cooperation with the SIGMAA.
Bill agreed to write an article for ‘Focus’ on our Earth Day Outreach, and the
joys of giving presentations in high schools.
In
Conversations, as we have the past two summers. We want to invite
in two
or three non-mathematicians for five-minute initial conversation-starters.
Barry agreed to recruit such people, perhaps about fisheries, groundwater,
smog, and/or sprawl. We agreed that it would be good to have local
environmental topics as the focus at each site. Barry will try local
groups near
In
environment for mathematical outreach. Michael P. Cohen will speak
about
government careers, Jim Wright (who writes regularly for his regional
paper) about media outreach, and Bill Stone about going to high schools.
We discussed having discussions following the
panel. Barry and I
thought this worked well for the CPW. We decided special training was not
as important for our issues as for gender issues. Do we have volunteers
for (untrained) discussion leaders? I suspect that Barry and I could
write a brief guide, if the group requests it.
Bill and Karen have submitted a proposal for a
contributed paper
session there. Thank you!
In
development in deserts, Judith Philips was
suggested as an expert on
xeriscaping.
For
definitive decisions. Pat urged Andy, new member of the Committee,
to
think about what kind of panel he would like to be on. It seems that
panels do not have to be proposed until the previous May, although we have
already submitted our proposal for
Karen and Ahlam agreed to
propose a poster session on EM for this
meeting. Ahlam has led these before and they
work well.