Minnesota Delta
St. John's University / College of St. Benedict
2010-2011 Chapter Report

Advisor: Prof Tom Sibley
PFC: Prof Jennifer Galovich

Number of New Members Inducted: 6

Number of Continuing Members: 15

Describe the two most interesting or unusual chapter activities this year:

In the fall semester, we decorated our tensegrity tower with mathematical Christmas decorations and entered it in the Christmas tree decorating contest held for student clubs. To the students' surprise, we didn't win the award for the most creative decorating, but we definitely had fun. This spring we had our most successful Pi Mu Epsilon conference--our 32nd one. William Dunham was our featured speaker and everyone was enthusiastic about his talks. We had 157 people in attendance, a record. Thanks to our Pi Mu Epsilon grant, we were able to give each of the sixteen student speakers a copy of Dunham's book _Journey Through Genius_, autographed by the author. In addition, since we had four more copies, we presented them to our mathematics majors who spoke at our campus Scholarship day. (So that we don't dominate our Pi Mu Epsilon conference with our own students, we encourage this split. Our chapter has an additional requirement of a public mathematical presentation in an appropriate venue.)

Do any of your chapter members plan to attend or present a paper at the 2011 PME national meeting at MathFest in Lexington, Kentucky?

Yes. Kelsey Larson and Hongying Zhao

Do you have any news about current students or recent graduates, for example, scholarships or other awards, acceptances to graduate school, paper presentations at conferences?

Cong Van will go to Kansas State for math grad school. David Byrne will go to Bowling Green State for math grad school. Sara Kokkila will go to Stanford U. for computational chemistry grad school. Kristin Reinsvold will go to U. of Nebraska for an MD/PhD program and anticipates to include mathematical biology on the research side. She spoke at Mathfest last summer and won the CUR prize. Matt Donner presented his research at NCUR. Matt Donner and David Byrne presented their research at the CURM conference in Provo, Utah. All five of these students wrote honors theses. Kelsey Larson and Hongying Zhao will be doing summer research. All of these students spoke about their research either at our PME conference or our Scholarship Day.

If you were awarded a PME Lectureship, Conference, or Prize Grant within the past year, please briefly describe the results.

Thanks to our Pi Mu Epsilon grant, we were able to give each of the sixteen student speakers a copy of Dunham's book _Journey Through Genius_, autographed by the author. In addition, since we had four more copies, we presented them to our mathematics majors who spoke at our campus Scholarship day.