Schoolcraft College is a two-year community college in Livonia, Michigan,
a suburb of Detroit. (The school is named after Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an
early Michigan naturalist.)
Our Math Awareness Week activities included the distribution of a special
newsletter and the awarding of an annual student mathematics prize.
The April issue of our monthly departmental newsletter, "The Right
Angle", was a special 16-pager in conjunction with MAW. Some 500 copies of
the newsletter were distributed to students at Schoolcraft and to math
teachers at three neighboring high schools. The newsletter included my
classroom exercise, "Deciding How Often to Air Commercials at a Radio
Station" (an optimization problem for the TI-82 calculator using Arbitron
figures and ad prices), a reprint of Paul Davis' theme article (which I
supplied with illustrations), a reprint of the profile of Rol Fessenden
(inventory strategist and planner at LL Bean) from the MAA's "Mathematical
Scientists at Work" booklet, a bibliography of resources on Mathematics and
Decision Making, a profile of a Schoolcraft College math student who
heads a rock band of the genre known as "math rock", and a summer project I
designed for students to lead them to discover the Prime Number Theorem
(currently celebrating its centennial). This newsletter will also be
distributed at Schoolcraft's public Open House on 19 May. Anyone interested
in a copy of the newsletter is welcome to contact me.
A reception was held in the Liberal Arts Building on 24 April for
the award of the first annual Pythagorean Prize, which was shared this year
by math students Stanley S. Cavin and Leland W. Rosenberger. The reception
was attended by some 40 people including the President and Vice President of
the college, other students, faculty and administrators and their family and
friends. The winners and runner-ups were presented with plaques,
certificates, tote bags and other mementoes, as well as copies of the book
"From Zero to Infinity" by donation of Addison-Wesley.
Randy K. Schwartz, Chair
Dept. of Mathematics
Schoolcraft College
18600 Haggerty Road
Livonia, MI 48152-2696
voice: 313/462-4400 extn. 5290
fax: 313/462-4558
e-mail: rschwart@schoolcraft.cc.mi.us
