LAKELAND, Fla. (Feb. 7, 2008) — Florida Southern College will host the 2008 Joint Annual Meetings of the Florida Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the Florida Two-Year Colleges Mathematical Association (FTYCMA) on Feb. 15-16. Dr. Lubomir Markov of Barry University, president of the MAA – Florida Section, and Dr. Byron Dyce of Santa Fe Community College, president of the FTYCMA, will be welcomed by Florida Southern College president Dr. Anne Kerr on Friday afternoon.

Plenary lectures will include “Flatland: the Movie and Beyond,” by Tom Banchoff, professor of mathematics, Brown University; “Random Walks and Network Tomography,” by Patrick McDonald, professor of mathematics, New College of Florida; and “Bright Lights on the Horizon,” by Deanna Haunsperger, professor of mathematics, Carleton College.

Florida Southern College will be represented at the conference by students Alan George and Ian Johnson who will present “Ideas for Using Robotics Applications in Undergraduate Mathematics Courses,” based on their summer computer science faculty/collaborative research and creative activity, Explorations with Robotics Software. George is majoring in computer science and mathematics with a minor in business. He is the son of Donald and Diane George of Dover, N.H. Johnson, also a computer science and mathematics major, is the son of Stephanie Diaz of Winter Haven, Fla. and Theodore Johnson of Fort Collins, Colo.

Associate Professors Dr. David Rose and Dr. Dan Jelsovsky will represent the FSC Mathematics Program Area. Rose will present “Boundary Distributions with Respect to Chebychev’s Inequality;” and Jelsovksy, FSC MAA liaison and MAA section coordinator of student activities, will offer and judge a student integral contest.

For more information about the meeting, please contact Jelsovsky at 683-680-3748.