Faculty Update: Quinn Elected to National Mathematics Board

UW Tacoma Professor of Mathematics Dr. Jennifer Quinn has been elected an officer-at-large member of the board of directors of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The association describes itself as “the world’s largest community of mathematicians, students, and enthusiasts.”

Quinn has been on the UW Tacoma faculty since 2007. Previously she was on the faculty and served as department chair at Occidental College after receiving her PhD in Mathematics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a combinatorial scholar whose research focuses on counting. As she puts it, “I like to count—specifically, finding concrete counting contexts that lead to clever combinatorial proofs of algebraic identities.” She is in demand as a speaker and panelist; one intriguingly titled topic is “Mathematics to DIE For: The Battle between Counting and Matching.”

In the past, Quinn has served as MAA second vice president and co-editor of MAA’s Math Horizons magazine. Currently, she serves as chair of the MAA Council on Publications and Communications. She received the MAA Haimo Award for distinguished college or university teaching, and the MAA Beckenback Book Award for Proofs That Really Count: The Art of Combinatorial Proof, a book she co-authored with Arthur Benjamin.

From 2005 to 2007, Quinn was executive director of the Association for Women in Mathematics. On the UW Tacoma campus, she has served as associate director of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (2009-2013), interim director of the campus’s Teaching & Learning Center (2015) and interim associate vice chancellor for academic affairs (2015-2016).

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Mathematical Association of America has 29 regional sections throughout North America, 14 special interest groups, and more than 14,000 individual members. The association administers the annual American Mathematics Competitions in middle and high schools, and, among many grant and award programs, offers the National Research Experience for Undergraduates Program, which “supports the participation of mathematics undergraduates from underrepresented groups in focused and challenging research experiences to increase their interest in advanced degrees and careers in mathematics.” MAA partners with the American Mathematical Society to present the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings, described as “the largest mathematics meeting in the world,” most recently held last month in San Diego.