Under the leadership of mathematics faculty members Dr. Andy Miller and Dr. Sarah Ann Stewart, Belmont’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science hosted nearly 400 mathematics faculty members, graduate students and undergraduate students on Belmont’s campus for the 88th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA-SE) Meeting March 12-14. The MAA-SE section covers Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina; almost 100 colleges and universities were represented at this year’s meeting. Miller and Stewart had worked for two years to make all the necessary preparations, including working with Belmont staff to set up events, overseeing Belmont students and faculty volunteer efforts, and communicating with MAA officials to organize the program of talks and other activities.
There were more than 90 contributed paper presentations on a wide variety of topics, including presentations by Belmont faculty members Dr. Danny Biles and Dr. Mike Pinter. Activities for undergraduate students included sessions for presentations of undergraduate research, a Poster Session with nearly 25 posters presented, a Treasure Hunt and Math Jeopardy. Belmont mathematics majors Amy Valentine and Cat Simpson received the Walt and Susan Patterson Award for their paper presentation on “Ugly Curves and the Loewner Equation,” which was the result of their work supervised by Belmont faculty member Dr. Joan Lind. Both of Belmont’s Math Jeopardy teams tied or won their preliminary round of the competition; the team with members Cat Simpson, Amy Valentine, Hank Carter and Neil Kowalewski came in Second Place overall during the Final Round.
