Clubs
This page highlights the clubs at University of Maryland
that I was most active in.
The first and possibly the most important to me was Pi Mu
Epsilon, Maryland Alpha chapter. This is the local branch of a national mathematics honor society. Sadly,
since the year I graduated (and most of the officers along with me) the club has
largely floundered and their website
has not been effectively updated.
Society of Physics Students (National Organization) was the student
group on campus that I had been active in the longest. This group was
essentially a social organization for people interested in the study of
physics. We'd get together and do fun things such as parties and movie
nights. In addition, we would organize talks by professors on
subjects of interest and serve as a contact point for the department on issues
relevant to the general phsyics community. SPS earns all of its quite
substantial income from selling donuts in the lobby of the physics building on
weekday mornings. I was in charge of handling physics demonstrations for
SPS meetings. Unlike PME, the SPS has remained active since I left and
their website
is still actively maintained.
Putnam
Mathematics Competition Group
The last organization I was really active in is the
Putnam Group. We were a collection of mathematically talented people who
competed in two annual mathematics competitions, the Virginia
Tech Regional Mathematics Competition and the Putnam
Competition . Each is designed to be
accessible to someone
with basic calculus background while still being quite hard. Putnam
is considered the definitive college level mathematics contest, with major awards and
recognition for top finishers. Honestly, I never performed at
the level I would have liked, but then it was never
my goal to really study for that strange aspect of mathematics
which is contest math, but I did have a good
deal of fun.
