My Experience Presenting at the MAA-Southeast Sectional Meeting

In April of 2016, I attended my first big conference, the Mathematical Association of America - Southeastern Sectional Meeting. The conference was held at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

The Mathematical Association of America, MAA, is a mathematical professional society. According to their site, their “members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists; statisticians; and many others in academia, government, business, and industry.”

​The MAA-Southeastern Section is comprised of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The section started holding annual conferences starting in 1922. According to their site, their conferences include:

• presentations of mathematical research by faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students
• presentations involving the scholarship of teaching and learning undergraduate mathematics
• professional development activities for new college faculty
• activities for undergraduate students (posters, Math Jeopardy, scavenger hunt, etc.)

I presented a poster on my research entitled, “Closing the Gap on Multi-Fold Triple Systems”. This is the first conference I’ve been to where I presented a poster, instead of doing an oral presentation.

​If I had to choose between the two I would definitely not choose posters. It is very challenging, but you do learn a lot. So, if you were scheduled to give an oral presentation, and had time to get a poster presentation in before hand, do it. It will let you know just how much you know about your own research.

The entire conference was very informative. Student from FMU and I participated in the Math Jeopardy contest, went to many different talks by professors and graduate students. I even attended a forum just for graduate students, I probably was not suppose to do that, but can’t fault me for trying to learn more.

I would recommend submitting an abstract to the MAA-SE Sectional Meeting. Or, just attending the meeting in general, you will learn a lot.