02 President's Message

President's Corner: 2013 SCVMA President’s Message

Hello All,

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year!

Santa Clara Valley Math Association is looking forward to our 52nd Annual SCVMA Math Field Day in March at West Valley College, where many schools from all over Santa Clara Valley send their top 3 students in each math course to compete with other talented math students. From every school, we usually have around 20 students that participate in this exciting event. We hope to provide you with several great opportunities for your students and math clubs this year. I am honored to be serving as the Santa Clara Valley Mathematics Association (SCVMA) President this year and would like to invite you to join us in planning and participating in our many activities.

This is an invitation for math teachers from elementary, middle school, high school and college to join us as SCVMA membership. We’ll be announcing the date and time for the board meetings as soon as possible. If you have any ideas to share, please bring them with you to the meetings or send me emails.

SCVMA sponsors several student mathematics competitions for students in Santa Clara County. The Senior Math Olympiad is our first event. This math contest is for three 12th graders from each school in December, be sure to invite your top 3 seniors soon. We have a special morning planned at Mission College! Check the website for more information.We honor excellence in teaching at all levels and also recognize top graduating seniors every year in May. See the nomination forms on this website.

I, myself, am a math club advisor at Lynbrook High School and I am happy to share with you the PowerPoint presentation Lynbrook Math Club created with all the details of many math contests that occur locally, nationally, and internationally. I hope this PowerPoint presentation will encourage more students at your schools to participate in these math contests.

One of my goals for SCVMA is to increase our membership of math teachers. We encourage every middle school, high school, college and university in the Santa Clara County to have at least one teacher who is a member of SCVMA and who can alert their fellow math colleagues about the great opportunities for their students. We value the input and participation of many school districts in planning and hosting our competitions and celebrating the annual awards in May.

Another important goal is to involve more students in the participation of math contests. In order to achieve this goal, as many schools in the Santa Clara Valley as possible will need to start a math club. I plan to do so by having emails sent out to schools asking for the names and emails of students who are highly interested in math. Then, the students from each school can come together and find a teacher who will be willing to help guide these students and provide a place to hold meetings. For this, we are happy to announce that we have appointed a new student chairman to the SCVMA board: Rachit Kataria. He will be in charge of collecting the emails of enthusiastic students, helping schools start a math club, and sharing other schools’ experiences.If you would like to contribute to the newsletter, we are looking for classroom activities, mathematics puzzles, reviews of mathematics-related literature, announcements of local mathematics events, great mathematics-related quotes/jokes/riddles, historical connections, or anything you think might be interesting or amusing to other mathematics teachers. Please contact me, Rita Korsunsky, rita_korsunsky@fuhsd.org.

SCVMA is a local affiliate of the California Mathematics Council (CMC) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). We encourage you to become members of these larger organizations and avail yourself of the publications and conferences that these organizations sponsor. The CMC North hosts an excellent math conference at Asilomar each December. We hope to see you there and would love to have you volunteer as well.

We look forward to seeing you and your colleagues at many of our events this year!

Sincerely,

Rita Korsunsky,

SCVMA President