This is a summary for all Pi Mu Epsilon Chapters of the meeting of the National Council of Pi Mu Epsilon, Inc., January 7, 2007 in New Orleans, LA.

Reports and Actions

• By email vote of Council, the Council voted unanimously to establish the Virginia Lambda Chapter at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. It is our 321st Chapter. The Chapter will be formally installed early during the spring 2007 semester by Councillor Eve Torrence from Randolph-Macon College.
• Two Chapters were formally reactivated during the fall semester. Past-President Robert Smith performed the reactivation ceremony at our Indiana Alpha Chapter at Purdue University, and Secretary-Treasurer Leo Schneider reactivated our West Virginia Alpha Chapter at West Virginia University.
• Pi Mu Epsilon has been computerizing its Membership records for the past few years. All active Chapters except for those in states from Montana through New York (in alphabetical order) received computer listings of all their members this fall. The remaining states will be completed by August.
• The Fall 2006 issue of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal arrived well before the end of most schools' fall terms. This is much earlier than in recent years! Our editor gives much of the credit to the new printing company. In order to be just as prompt with the spring 2007 issue, the cutoff will be March 1. Students whose Chapter Advisors submit the Enrollment Form for spring inductees before March 1 will have receive the spring 2007 issue as their first issue of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal; students on Enrollment Forms received March 2 or later will begin their subscriptions with the fall 2007 issue.
• The Editor of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal reported that she has over 100 proposals in process; the number of submissions has been increasing. However, there are very few articles written by undergraduate students only. Our Andree Awards are given for articles written by students only, not for joint-authored papers. There seems to be a trend for faculty to add their names as joint authors to student-written papers, and that disqualifies the student from being eligible for the Andree Award. In an attempt to generate more articles written by students, each student who receives a Pi Mu Epsilon award for an excellent presentation at MathFest 2007 will receive, with their check, an invitation to submit their talk as an article for the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal.
• The Editors of the Problem Section of the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal report that everything is going well. There is a $500 prize offered for the best undergraduate solution to one of the problems in the fall 2006 issue. The deadline for submission of solutions to problems in the fall 2006 issue is January 31. A new set of problems, those to appear in the spring 2007 issue of our journal, will be posted on our Pi Mu Epsilon web site within a few days of February 1.
• Plans are well underway for our national Pi Mu Epsilon conference to be held in San Jose Thursday August 2 through Sunday August 5.
  • Student speakers will be reimbursed for their transportation, as usual. The registration form and details for reimbursement will be posted on the Pi Mu Epsilon web site around March 1, 2007. The deadline for submission of student abstracts is Friday June15, 2007.
  • At MathFest 2007, for the first time, Pi Mu Epsilon will provide projectors for students who wish to use Power Point or computer animation in their presentation. The speaker is responsible for providing the laptop and its connection wires to the projector.
  • Pi Mu Epsilon will host a breakfast for Pi Mu Epsilon Chapter Advisors 7:00A.M. Friday August 3.
  • The 2007 Frame Lecturer Saturday evening, August 4, will be Donald Knuth.
  • There are many $150 cash prizes for the best student talks. In addition to the seven subsidized by the AMS and the one subsidized by CUR for talks from any area of mathematics, Pi Mu Epsilon can award up to two prizes for talks in each of the areas of applied mathematics (supplied by SIAM) and environmental mathematics (supplied by SIGMAA-EM). We have never been able to give all four of these prizes simply because students have not prepared talks in these areas. We encourage students to research and talk about mathematics in these areas.
• The MAA denied Pi Mu Epsilon's request that MathFest 2014 be held in Syracuse, NY in honor of the founding of Pi Mu Epsilon at the University of Syracuse in 1914. The MAA stated that there were insufficient facilities for all the activities that currently surround MathFest. Therefore, Pi Mu Epsilon will have to find other ways to celebrate its centennial in 2014.
• In our Lectureship Program, this spring semester five schools will benefit from our grants: Wake Forest University, the University of South Carolina, Fordham University, St Peter's College, and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Complete minutes of this meeting will be available from the Pi Mu Epsilon Secretary-Treasurer after they are approved at the August 2007 meeting of the Pi Mu Epsilon Council in San Jose, CA.