Iowa Section Award for Distinguished
College or University Teaching of Mathematics

Previous Award Recipients

Call for Nominations

2008 MAA Iowa Section Award
Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics

Nominations for the 2008 MAA Section Awards for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics are now being accepted. The Iowa Section Selection Committee will determine the recipient of the award from those nominated. The awardee will be honored at the Spring 2008 meeting of the Section and will be widely recognized and acknowledged within the Section. The awardee will also be the official Section nominee for the 2009 MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award 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 2009 with a certificate and check for $1000. A special session at that meeting is devoted to talks by the awardees on aspects of their teaching.

Anyone may 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. Please make sure you consult the nomination process below.

We urge you to submit a nomination for the MAA Iowa Section Award if you have someone eligible and qualified in your department. Even if not selected this year, it is an honor for someone to have been nominated, and your candidate can likely be nominated again in a future year. Your department will receive recognition for its commitment to excellence in teaching, and the work done in preparing a nomination folder for your candidate is a tribute in itself. Self-nomination is not permitted.

Please discuss this memo with your colleagues and post it in a prominent place in your department.

Eligibility

• o College or university teachers who currently teach a mathematical science at least halftime during the academic year in a public or private college or university (from two-year college teaching through teaching at the Ph.D. level) in the United States or Canada. 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 experience in teaching a mathematical science.
• Membership in the Mathematical Association of America.

Guidelines for Nomination

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 institution**
• 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 such as the Putnam Prize Competition or the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, attracting students to become majors in a mathematical science or to become Ph.D. candidates, working with pre-service or in-service teachers, etc.

** "influence beyond..." can take many forms, including demonstrated lasting impact on alumni, influence on the profession through curricular revisions in college mathematics teaching with wide-ranging impact, influential publications or innovative books concerned with the teaching of college mathematics, etc.

Preliminary nominations must be submitted on the enclosed Nomination Form (Word or PDF). Please follow the instructions on that form precisely to assure uniformity in the selection process both at the section and national levels.

All preliminary nomination forms received by the Section Secretary by November 30, 2007, will be considered for the Section Teaching Award. A Section Selection Committee will review nominations and select an awardee (by mid December). Please send one copy of the preliminary nomination form to the Section Secretary. A template of the nomination form is attached and can also be found at the Section's web page: http://www.maa.org/iowa. Nominations for someone from another Section should be sent to the Secretary of the nominee's Section.

Professor Wendy Weber, Secretary
Iowa Section
Box 066, 812 University
Pella, Iowa 50219
weberw@central.edu

The Section Teaching awardee will be announced at the spring Section meeting and will be the Section's nominee for the national Haimo Award. The Section Secretary will ask the nominee's Department Chair to work with the nominator in supplying additional required materials for the Haimo nomination. Ultimately, a complete nomination must also include evidence of success in teaching. All materials for the Haimo nomination must be submitted to the Section Secretary by February 1, 2008. If the file on the Section's awardee significantly exceeds the limits prescribed, it will not be considered for a national award and will be returned to the Section.

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.

Wendy Weber
MAA Iowa Section Secretary

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