Allegheny Mountain Section
Mathematical Association of America
Serving Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia
Call for Nominations for 2009 MAA Allegheny Mountain Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics
Nominations for the 2009 Allegheny Mountain Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics are now being solicited. The Allegheny Mountain Section Selection Committee will choose one of the nominees for the Section Award. The awardee will be honored at the spring meeting of the Section and will be widely recognized and acknowledged within the Section. The awardee will also be the official Section candidate for the national MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. There will be at most three national awardees, each of whom will be honored at the national MAA meeting in January 2010 and receive a $1,000 check and a certificate.
Anyone is entitled to make a nomination, but nominations from chairs or MAA liaisons in departments of mathematical sciences are especially solicited. For this reason, this call for nominations is sent to both department chairs and MAA liaisons so that the responsibility for nominations can be shared between them.
We urge you to submit a nomination
if you have someone eligible and qualified in your department in order
that your candidate has an opportunity to be considered for the Section
Award and, if so selected, also for the national award. Even if
not selected this year, it is an honor for someone to have been
nominated, your department will have demonstrated its commitment to
excellence in teaching, and the work done in preparing
a nomination folder for your candidate is not wasted since your
candidate
can be nominated again in a future year. Self-nomination is not
permitted. In addition to discussing this memo with your colleagues,
preferably at
a department meeting, please post it in a prominent place in your
department.
College or university teachers assigned at least half time during the academic year to teaching a mathematical science in a public or private college or university (from two-year college through teaching at the Ph.D. level) in the Allegheny Mountain Section of the MAA. Those on approved leave (sabbatical or other) during the academic year in which they are nominated qualify if they fulfilled the requirements in the previous year.
At least five years teaching experience in a mathematical science
Membership in the Mathematical Association of America
The nominees should:
Be widely recognized as extraordinarily successful in their teaching*
Have teaching effectiveness that can be documented
Have had influence in their teaching beyond their own institutions**
Foster curiosity and generate
excitement about mathematics in their students.
* “teaching” is to be interpreted in its broadest
sense, not necessarily limited to classroom teaching (it may include
activities such as preparing students for mathematical competitions at
the college
level, for example, the Putnam Prize Competition or the Mathematical
Contest
in Modeling, or attracting students to become majors in a mathematical
science
or to become Ph.D. candidates).
** “influence beyond their own institution” can take
many forms, including demonstrated lasting impact on alumni, influence
on the profession through curricular revisions in college mathematics
teaching with national impact, influential or innovative books on the
teaching of college mathematics, etc.
To nominate someone for this award, please see the full instructions for completing a nomination packet. The Nomination Form can be found here. Please follow all instructions precisely to assure uniformity in the selection process both at the Section and national levels.
If a file on a Section awardee significantly exceeds the prescribed limits (as stated in the instructions), it will not be considered for a national award and will be returned to the Section.
Please send three copies of the nomination packet to
James Sellers
Materials must be received no later than February 2, 2009.
Nominations for someone from another Section should be sent to the Secretary of the nominee’s Section.
The Section Selection Committee will select the Section awardee and communicate its selection to the national MAA secretary no later than March 1 so that the national Committee can then make its selections.
We look forward to your participation in this
exciting MAA venture of taking
substantive action to honor extraordinarily successful teaching.
We
want to see such teaching recognized at all post-secondary school
levels. We depend on you to help us identify those who merit such
recognition.