Fellow mathematicians,

Welcome back everyone. I hope your winter break was refreshing and relaxing. Here at Goshen we are just about ready to have our "spring" break.

This January I went to the Joint Math Meetings in San Diego. I rarely go because the timing often does not work with the meetings conflicting with the start of our semester. But this year I was able to go and only miss one day of class. I went to many interesting sessions and met up with colleagues from other parts of the country that I rarely see. I was also delighted to discover that there are mathematicians who knit and do other crafts and who get together one evening during the Joint Meetings for a "knitting circle". A few of them got together a couple of years back and wrote a book "Making Mathematics with Needlework" published by A.K. Peters. I regretted not going more often to the national meetings. So, if you don't already, I encourage you to attend the national meetings. The next meeting is MathFest, July 31-August 2, close by in Madison, Wisconsin. Next year's Joint Meetings will be in Washington, D.C.

Please mark March 28-29 on your calendars for this spring's Indiana Section Meeting at St. Mary's College in South Bend. As usual, our Friendly Competition will be held on Friday afternoon.

We will have two invited speakers. Tommy Ratliff comes to us from Wheaton College in Massachusetts. His current research interests are in geometric interpretations in Voting Theory, which is probably an area of interest to many of you in this election year. He also has interest in using writing assignments in mathematics classes and is the co-author of Writing Projects for Mathematics Courses: Crushed Clowns, Cars and Coffee to Go published by MAA. He will be speaking on voting theory. Our other speaker is Nancy Hagelgans from the MAA. She is a Professor Emerita at Ursinus College and a member of the MAA Executive Committee. Her interests are computer solutions to mathematics problems and she will be speaking on planar linkages, the kind of link that is found in carpenters' rulers or robotic arms.

We will also have sessions for your contributed talks. I invite you to submit talks and encourage your students to also submit talks. Graduate student talks are also very welcome.

Please submit news and announcements for our web newsletter so that we can keep up to date with what is happening at schools in the section.

I look forward to seeing you in next month at the Spring Meeting!

Patricia Oakley
Chair of the Indiana Section of the MAA