Sonia Kovalevsky Mathematics Day
at Western Oregon University

For high school girls and their teachers
Saturday, February 25, 2012
WOU Werner University Center
9:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Ready now! 2012 Brochure and Registration Form

Free and fun! Lunch and snacks! Contest Prizes! Door Prizes!

Sonia Kovalevsky Day is a program of hands-on workshops and talks for high school women students and their teachers, both women and men. This year, we will also be having a Math Fair. The purpose of the day is to encourage young women to continue their study of mathematics and to assist the teachers of women mathematics students.

Sponsors: The Western Oregon University Foundation and Mathematics Department
                  

Sonia Kovalevsky (Sofia Kovalevskaya) is a famous mathematician and scientist who was born in Moscow in 1850. She displayed an aptitude for mathematics while still a young girl but her interest in formal study was discouraged by her father. She married and moved to Germany to study, but was obliged to be tutored privately since universities would not allow women to attend. She was, however, granted her doctorate, summa cum laude, from Göttingen University in 1874, having completed three papers, one of which was a remarkable contribution to the subject of partial differential equations. Despite her gifts, she was unable to obtain an academic position for many years. She went on to become a respected figure in the European scientific community, lecturing in Stockholm, editing a new journal, organizing international conferences and winning prizes from the French and Swedish Academies of Science for her important work on the study of rigid bodies. She died of influenza in 1891, at the peak of her career, in which she published ten papers in mathematics and mathematical physics and also several literary works.

Past brochures: 2011, 2010, 2009

Schedule of Events
Time
Event
9:15 - 9:45 a.m.

Registration
Columbia Room, Werner University Center

9:45 - 10:00 a.m.

Welcome and Opening Address
Dr. Cheryl Beaver, Mathematics Department
Dr. Kent Neely, Provost

10:00 - 10:45 a.m.

Three concurrent hands-on sessions
Each girl will attend each session over the course of the day: session attendance order will be assigned at registration

Session 1: Coffee Mugs and Donuts

Session 2: Winner Takes All

Session 3: Circling Around Geometry

10:45 - 11:30 a.m.
Campus Tour
11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Three concurrent hands-on sessions
12:15 - 1:15 p.m.

Lunch

1:15 - 2:00 p.m.

Three concurrent hands-on sessions

Teacher Resource Session (Brian Hanna)

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Math Fair
Student-centered, hands-on, all-inclusive problem solving. Working with mathematics students from Western Oregon University, participants will help to solve interesting and exciting problems and win fun prizes.

Door Prizes Awarded!

Please Return Completed Registration Forms to:

Sonia Kovalevsky Day
Mathematics Department
Western Oregon University
345 N. Monmouth Avenue
Monmouth, OR 97361

Questions? Call the Mathematics Department at 503-838-8465

Special THANKS to the following supporters for their generous donations for the 2012 SK Day