The spring meeting of the Maryland-DC-Virginia section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held on April 26 at James Madison University, set records for student participation and overall participation. Roanoke College was in the thick of it. Dave Taylor finished his two-year term as Section program chair, putting together an excellent program of 54 speakers, of which 23 were student talks. Roland Minton gave the Friday evening banquet talk on A Mathematical Mystery Tour and Karin Saoub presented her research Dynamic Storage Allocation using Tolerance Graphs. Students Jon Marino (Integer Compositions Applied to the Probability Analysis of Blackjack and the Infinite Deck Assumption) and Heather Cook (Assessment of Water Quality in the Chesapeake Bay by Parameter Estimation) gave well-received talks. The Math Jeopardy team of Jon Marino, Reem Zeidan, and Sam Parsons finished in second place by 1 point. The Radical Dash team of Morgan Elston, Reem Zeidan, Sam Parsons, and Justin Giguere competed well. Hannah Robbins and Karin Saoub participated in Section NeXT, which provides younger faculty with resources for success in teaching and research. The weekend was topped off with two awards, Roland Minton winning the section teaching award and Jon Marino winning the student paper competition. Roanoke College has a very visible and positive presence in our MAA section, one that promotes the college and gives us important connections in the mathematics community.
