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The Early Years of the Michigan Section |
In the State of Michigan in the early 1920's the state organization which concerned itself with mathematics and its teaching was the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, organized in 1894 to give high school teachers an opportunity to meet and discuss their problems. It met once a year, usually around April 1, and had sections called conferences which reflected the various disciplines of the high school program at the time. So it included also a Mathematics Conference. At the 1922 meeting of the Mathematics Conference of the Schoolmasters' Club, T. H. Hildebrandt noted that there were present a number of staff members of the University of Michigan, the normal schools of the state, and some of the colleges. However, the meeting concerned teaching. It occurred to him that it might be possible to organize a section of the Mathematical Association of America for the State of Michigan as had been done in other parts of the country. As a consequence he brought the matter up for discussion at a meeting of the Mathematics Club of the University of Michigan, which then consisted in the main of staff members. It was decided that the best procedure was to write to the heads of departments in the colleges and normal schools of the state and find out whether such a project would be of interest to their departments. The result of this survey was that there was general approval for such a move and it was suggested that perhaps the organizational meeting could be held in connection with the meetings of the Schoolmasters' Club in April of 1923. The chairman of the Mathematics Conference of the Club for that year was Professor Harold E. Blair of then Western State Normal School at Kalamazoo (now Western Michigan University). With his collaboration the material on the program of the meeting for that year included aspects of the relationship between high school and collegiate mathematics teaching. It was also arranged that the last part of the afternoon session of the Conference would be set aside for taking steps towards the organization of a Section of the Mathematical Association of America. To expedite matters a committee of the staff at the University of Michigan had drawn up a tentative constitution and by-laws in advance of the meeting. The meeting was held as planned. About 35 members of the Association from the State of Michigan were present, as well as some potential members. T. H. Hildebrandt was elected temporary chairman. W. B. Ford, who was at the time the editor of the American Mathematical Monthly, gave a talk outlining the history of the Association, its organization, and its aims, particularly in meeting needs of the collegiate teachers of mathematics. The constitution and by-laws submitted were adopted with few changes. Officers for the ensuing year consisted of T. H. Hildebrandt as chairman, John P. Everett of Kalamazoo as secretary/treasurer, and E. R. Sleight of Albion as third member of the Executive Committee. It was voted to apply for a charter to the Mathematical Association of America with those who wished to join before June 1 becoming charter members of the Section. It was agreed to meet as a separate body in April of the next year, but have some sort of joint session with the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club. The following institutions were represented at the organizational meeting: University of Michigan, Michigan State College at East Lansing (now Michigan State University), Normal Schools at Ypsilanti, Kalamazoo, and Mount Pleasant (now Eastern, Western, and Central Michigan Universities); Albion, Alma, Hope, and Olivet Colleges, and Detroit Junior College. The first regular meeting of the Section was held on April 3, 1924 with 57 persons present, of whom 36 were members of the Association. Six papers were presented at the meeting. The Section acknowledged its indebtedness to the Mathematics Conference of the Schoolmasters' Club and met with the conference at lunch. During the year preceding, the question of the relation of the Section to the Michigan Academy of Sciences was explored. This academy was started mainly by college teachers of the natural sciences and did not have a section devoted to mathematics. It did not seem to be advisable to have two groups in the State of Michigan devoted to collegiate mathematics. So consultation with the officers of the Academy yielded the idea of establishing a Mathematics Section in the Michigan Academy of Sciences, whose program would be presented by the Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America. The chairman of the Michigan Section would function in both organizations. At this first meeting it was decided to request such an organization in the Michigan Academy of Sciences, which was approved. For many years thereafter, the Michigan Section of the MAA functioned as the Mathematics Section of the Michigan Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences. Two mathematicians served as president of the Michigan Academy of Sciences: Alfred L. Nelson, 1946-47, and J. Sutherland Frame, 1958-59. Participation in the meetings of the Section was limited initially to staff members of colleges and universities in Michigan. However, some members of the staff at the University of Toledo expressed an interest in meeting with the Section and an invitation was extended for them to do so. This group participated even to the extent of furnishing a chairman of the Section at one time. This contact was dropped after World War II. Attendance at the meetings increased gradually from the initial 57 persons with 36 members of the Association present until the beginning of World War II, during which it dropped to 43 and 33, respectively, for the meeting of 1943, while the meeting for 1945 was omitted entirely. Since 1945 the attendance again increased with the increase in collegiate mathematics faculty in the state, so that in 1965 the attendance was 140, in 1975 it was 160, in 1985 again 140, and in 1989 it was over 200, most being members of the MAA. At the beginning, the Michigan Academy of Sciences was holding all of its meeting in Ann Arbor in the spring, and the Section met with them. However, some members of the Section felt the need for having the Section meeting at their institutions. As a consequence it was decided in 1934 to hold two meetings each year, one being around Thanksgiving at a place other than Ann Arbor, and continue with the spring meeting in Ann Arbor in conjunction with the Academy. This was done in alternate years until World War II, and while the attendance for the fall meeting was not quite as good as for the spring, the Section enjoyed being the guest of the collegiate institutions of the state. After World War II the Michigan Academy decided to meet in places other than Ann Arbor in alternate years, which of course included the Mathematics Section, so the second meeting of the Section in the fall of the year was dropped. In 1963 the Michigan Academy adopted a policy that only members of the Academy could present papers at the meetings of the Academy. Although the additional expense would be small, this action resulted in a resolution being proposed to the Section in 1963 that the Section withdraw as the Mathematics Section of the Michigan Academy. Action was not taken on this proposal immediately, but the Section did begin meeting later in the spring of each year, separately from the Academy. Finally, after the Academy decided to enforce its policy on membership in the Academy, it was voted at the annual meeting of the Section in 1970 to disassociate the Section from the Academy. In the business meeting of 1935, the question of stimulating mathematics among undergraduates was brought up, and the suggestion was made of possibly inaugurating prize contests. A committee was appointed to investigate the matter. The committee, with Professor E. R. Sleight of Albion College as chairman, reported the following year that the matter of a prize contest seemed to involve too many difficulties and proposed instead that undergraduates be encouraged to prepare papers on mathematical topics and that they be allowed to speak at meetings of the Section. This idea was carried through, and most of the meetings of the Section for a time offered a period devoted to student presentations. The Section agreed to mimeograph the papers and present them for distribution among the college departments. Interest in undergraduate participation increased until it was evident that undergraduates could have a meeting of their own, which happened in 1941. The war intervened and the idea was not reinstated. In the early 1950's the question of what could be done to spread the gospel of mathematics among college students was brought up again, and the suggestion was made that a pamphlet be prepared outlining ways in which a knowledge of mathematics was desirable, with the attractiveness of mathematics as a profession outlined. The pamphlet, prepared under the chairmanship of C. C. Richtmeyer of Mount Pleasant, was entitled "The Mathematics Student, To Be or Not To Be" and was distributed for a small fee to the different colleges of the state. It aroused considerable interest to the extent that the sale of the pamphlet resulted in a small contribution to the treasury of the Section. When the Section was formed, it was hoped that members of the Section from the smaller institutions would participate by giving papers and that the sessions would not be preempted by the larger institutions. This hope was not realized, so in the main the papers came from the larger institutions in the state. Because of a feeling that perhaps members from the smaller institutions felt that their contributions were too small for a regular paper, it was proposed to devote some time in the afternoon meetings of the Section to five-minute talks, or to have an open forum, which had no set program but at which any member of the group could, on the spur of the moment, offer something in the nature of a five-minute note, which might be of interest to other members of the Section. The idea caught on pretty well; many interesting short notes were offered, and many members participated. In the ensuing years this idea was dropped as the number of regular contributed papers from various institutions increased. The number of contributed papers varied from the original six to about a dozen, so that a single day of meetings continued to suffice through the 1960's. At times the program committees, even when working through the chairmen of departments, had headaches in getting together enough speakers for meetings. The idea of having invited speakers give hour-long talks was a welcome resort, to add to the program, and the Section has had the pleasure of listening (fairly regularly) to some outstanding mathematicians, both within and outside the Section. These invited addresses also made it possible to invite speakers from related sciences. Thus in the early days speakers from astronomy, aeronautical engineering, physics and even archaeology (the Mayan calendar) addressed the Section. Early on, the height of outside speakers addressing the group was reached in 1965 when the Section had three invited addresses: R. P. Boas of Northwestern University on undergraduate curricula, R. L. Wilder, at the time president of the Association, on axiomatics, and Saunders Mac Lane of the University of Chicago on categories. Other examples include Peter Hilton presenting two talks in 1973 on "The Language of Categories in Undergraduate and High School Mathematics"; Cambridge University's John Conway speaking on "Life is Universal"; in 1979, Paul Halmos on "How to be a Mathematician"; and in 1985 Paul Erdös presenting "Recent Results in Geometric Number Theory". In 1971 the Section's Executive Committee approved Western Michigan University's plan to extend the annual meeting in Kalamazoo to a two-day format and hold a Friday evening banquet. The success of this experiment, providing more time for additional hour talks and more student papers, as well as more time for informal socializing, led to the continuation of the Friday-Saturday format. Soon thereafter, several new activities were introduced. The High School Visiting Lecture Program was established in 1973 and began functioning in 1974. Institutional memberships were approved, with about 25 colleges and universities contributing to the Section coffers by their annual dues. The Upper Michigan Summer Seminars (Short Courses) began in 1974 at Northern Michigan University, attracting faculty from Michigan and neighboring states. Also, with the start of the academic year 1974-75, the Michigan Section Newsletter was born, with two issues each year. In the spring of 1975, upon the suggestion of the national office of the MAA and with its financial support, the annual meeting of the Section, held at General Motors Institute in Flint, was devoted to an Oxford-type seminar that included seven applied mathematics seminars conducted by representatives from industry. Finally, in the light of increased efforts to include colleagues from two-year colleges in Section activities, the Section by-laws were revised to include in the slate of officers a Section vice chairperson from two-year college faculties, with the first one elected in 1976. In a like manner, the Section in recent years has increased its liaison with the Michigan Council of the Teachers of Mathematics and has introduced activities on various fronts dealing with the mathematics education of students and with the mathematics preparation of elementary and secondary teachers. |
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These pages are maintained by Sidney Graham.
Please send any additions or corrections to sidney.w.graham@gmail.com.
Please send any additions or corrections to sidney.w.graham@gmail.com.