Washington, D.C. (February 1, 2022) – The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is excited to welcome the following to its Board of Directors:
- President-Elect, Hortensia Soto
- Vice President, Adriana Salerno
- Associate Secretary, Nancy Neudauer
- Secretary, Cynthia Wyels
- Chair of Congress, Edray Goins
MAA expresses its sincere gratitude to the following outgoing officers and members of the Board of Directors for their dedication to the association, community, and mathematics. We are thankful for their service and leadership.
- Immediate Past President, Michael Dorff
- Vice President, April Strom
- Associate Secretary, Hortensia Soto
- Secretary, James Sellers
- Chair of Congress, Tim Chartier
About the New MAA Officers
Hortensia Soto, President-Elect
Hortensia is a Professor of Mathematics at Colorado State University. She has published in various areas of mathematics education including assessment, mathematical preparation of elementary teachers, outreach efforts for high school girls, and especially in the area of teaching and learning of undergraduate mathematics. Her current research efforts are dedicated to investigating the teaching and learning complex analysis, where she adopts an embodied cognition perspective and is part of the Embodied Mathematics Imagination and Cognition community. Since her days as an undergraduate student, Hortensia has mentored young women and promoted mathematics via summer outreach programs. She has also been involved with facilitating professional development for K-16 teachers in Nebraska, Colorado, and California. As a result of this work, she received the MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. Hortensia is a working member of the Mathematical Association of America and currently serves as the Associate Secretary and is an editor of the MAA Instructional Practices Guide. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, practicing yoga, meditating, reading, and most of all spending time with her son Miguel.
Adriana Salerno, Vice President
Adriana believes that everyone is a math person, that learning mathematics should be equal parts joyful and challenging, that to learn mathematics one must do mathematics, that no one should have to leave their identity at the door, that mathematics is not neutral, and that we are all better at mathematics if we work together. She is passionate about all of the MAA’s core values and is excited to continue her contributions to these goals as VP of the MAA. She loves doing math and helping others do math. That’s a lesson she learned when she started getting serious about mathematics as an undergraduate at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in her home of Venezuela. Salerno moved to the US for graduate school and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. Her main research area is number theory, in particular its intersections with geometry, physics, and cryptography. While in graduate school, Salerno connected mathematics with another lifelong passion, writing and communication, by doing the AMS-AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. She has continued that work, writing for MAA FOCUS as well as founding and editing popular blogs on the profession and equity issues. She currently serves as Professor of mathematics and chair at Bates College. As a liberal arts professor, her commitment to creating and developing a more inclusive and equitable math community has grown, through innovative pedagogy, equity work, and communication of mathematics. She was chosen to be MAA’s visiting mathematician during her last sabbatical (Fall 2006), and she had an amazing time working with MAA staff, thinking about ways to make the MAA better.
Nancy Neudauer, Associate Secretary
Nancy Ann Neudauer is the Thomas and Joyce Holce Professor of Science at Pacific University. She received her MA and Ph.D. in Mathematics, with a minor in Business and Law, and her BBA in Actuarial Science and Risk Management, all from the University of Wisconsin. Actively involved with the MAA for as long as she can remember (she gave her first talk at an MAA meeting while still a high school student), she is the Director of the MAA Dolciani Mathematics Enrichment Grant Program, which funds projects for middle and high school students, a PI on the NSF-funded META Math (the Mathematical Education of Teachers as an Application of Mathematics) project, and the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award and a Meritorious Service Award. She has served on, and chaired, several MAA committees, including Invited Address Committees for both MathFest and the Joint Meetings, the Gung & Hu Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics committee, the Council on Outreach Programs, the Committee on Sessions of Contributed Papers, a CUPM Curriculum Guide study group, and the AMS-MAA Joint Lecture Committee. As a Fulbright Specialist, her outreach extends to African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Centres in South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon, and Rwanda. When not sharing the beauty of mathematics with her students, she races sailboats and travels wherever she can, rarely leaving the house without her passport and a packed bag, just in case.
Cynthia Wyels, Secretary
Cynthia (Cindy) Wyels is a native Californian who earned a B.A. from Pomona College and a Ph.D. from U.C. Santa Barbara, both in Mathematics. After brief stints at the U.S. Military Academy and Weber State, she worked at California Lutheran University for several years before moving to then-young California State University (CSU) Channel Islands. There she has co-authored three HSI-STEM grants and multiple National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, and directed the campus’ Louis Stokes’ Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program -- all focused on creating educational opportunities for students, particularly those from non-traditional backgrounds. She has been recognized with the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science’s (SACNAS) Distinguished Mentor Award, the MAA’s Haimo Award, and named her institution’s UndocuAlly of the Year. Her mathematical research interests began in combinatorial mathematics and linear algebra. She is now applying data analysis tools to study the effectiveness of educational interventions and to collaborate on issues arising in environmental conservation.
Edray Goins, Chair of Congress
Edray Herber Goins grew up in South Los Angeles, California. The product of the Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) public school system, Goins attended the California Institute of Technology, where he majored in mathematics and physics, and earned his doctorate in mathematics from Stanford University. He has worked as a researcher at both Harvard and the National Security Agency; and has taught at both Caltech and Purdue. Goins is currently a Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He has published over 25 journal articles in areas such as applied mathematics, graph theory, number theory, and representation theory; and on topics such as Diophantine equations, elliptic curves, and African Americans in mathematics. He runs a federally-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) titled Pomona Research in Mathematics Experience (PRiME).