Skip to main content

Looking Forward

I've been part of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America since 1988, so I'm coming up on 40 years soon. After seeing a number of talks by other people I decided that I could do that and so I've given talks at most of the 38 years that I've attended.

The Southeastern Section consists of Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. In olden days we included Florida but they broke off long before I joined.

In 1994 I was recruited and served a three-year term as NC State Director, responsible for keeping tabs on the math departments in the state and organizing dinner talks throughout the state. I was ambitious and bumped up the dinner talks from once a year to twice a year, allowing us to cover more of a big state. It was then I discovered my superpower of asking people to do hard things that they wanted to do already but just needed a nudge. 

I thought I was out but they pulled me back in; I served as Section Webmaster 2003-2010, easily the coolest title I will ever have. I was the second webmaster; my predecessor started the website from scratch while still doing his day job. My two goals were to standardize the site for ease of use through the use of templates and to analyze the web logs and revise the website in such a way as to minimize the number of clicks to get to the most popular material. 

Both of these jobs had me joining the Executive Committee of the Section, consisting of the many Section officers. Because of the size of the region we have split tasks up finely to make them doable, with many officers. I was truly impressed by finding myself surrounded by funny, enthusiastic, and creative people really wanting to serve the Section. If I have amassed any of those qualities it is by osmosis from being around the more seasoned officers.

I decided to take a year off in 2015 and when there was a conflict I went to the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (not for the first time) even though it conflicted with the Section meeting. This was of course the Section meeting where I received the Distinguished Service Award to my great embarassment. 

Even more surprising the next year I was asked by the Nominating Committee if I would be willing to be nominated and elected (a formality, since we very rarely have nominations from the floor) to serve as Section Chair. The timing was shortly before the election; I am sure that their previous choices for nominee declined. It was a job I had had an interest in but after six years off the Executive Committee I had thought that it had passed me by. I wanted to serve the section, to work with the other officers, and had some specific goals for improving a few parts of how we did things and said yes.

So in March 2016 I became Chair-Elect, shadowing the Chair, then in March 2017 became Section Chair for two years, before becoming Past Chair (think consigliere without the omerta) for a year. It was a blur but a very satisfying blur those two years and the whole four-year period.

I've run for another Section office since then, losing twice. I'd be sadder but both times the person that won the election did a wonderful job and I've found other things to do with my time.

So now, I'm chairing a committee to revise our Section's bylaws. There are many people on the Executive Committee who care about the bylaws; this is where the nuts and bolts of inclusion and diversity occur. We have a good revision ready to be voted on tomorrow. Tonight I will join the dinner meeting of the Executive Committee as a guest in that role. 

I look forward to seeing old and new friends tonight at the Executive Committee meeting.

I look forward to some really good talks tomorrow, as well as the vote on the bylaws revision in the afternoon Business Meeting.

I look forward to giving a talk Saturday morning.

Traveling to Alabama has been strenuous, something I feel more and more as I age. Since we come here every five years I don't know yet if this will be my last visit to the state. Time will tell.

I've been looking forward to this.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again.  I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam.  Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...
1 comment
Read more

Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collective

Something good happened this week; I was informed of it yesterday when a colleague forwarded an email to me announcing it.  The announcement had to do with our university administration committing resources to something that needed doing; the fact that it had not been done had threatened the safety and work environment of dozens of my colleagues. I was clueless about it until in my job as ombudsperson I heard about it from multiple individuals. 95% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is focused on the individuals who come to me, brainstorming about their options and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. I've been around my university for over 36 years so I've picked up some knowledge of our system and as a mathematician I have a lot of training and experience in problem-solving. I'm not bad at counseling stressed individuals; professional development at ombuds meetings has helped me a lot with that. 5% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is managing upward. The...
Post a Comment
Read more