Second Announcement and Call for Talks

ORCA Math Conference for

Teachers & Undergraduates

July 28, 2008

CSU, Chico, California

This is a second announcement for a conference to be held in Chico on July 28, 2008.

Invited Speaker: Lisa Berger of Stony Brook University

Title: Shelving Books

Abstract: Your new apartment has built-in bookshelves, and you want to know whether or not your mathematical tomes will fit. Is it enough to know the length and number of the shelves and the total thickness of your books? This is the shelf-packing problem, a special example of the partition problem. We'll discuss additional applications of this problem, partial results, and open questions.

Call for Contributed Talks (Deadline: July 18, 2008)

We invite undergraduates and teachers to present their research in mathematics and related fields. To contribute a 20-minute talk, just send a title and abstract by e-mail to Thomas (TMattman@CSUChico.edu) by the deadline.

The conference will be held in Holt Hall on the campus of CSU, Chico. Click here to get information about travel and accommodations including maps of campus.

Funding: The conference is supported by the Chico State math department and by a NSF RUMC grant administered through the MAA (see http://www.maa.org/rumc/). There is some travel funding available to students and teachers from the region. Please contact the organizers to apply for this support.

For further information, please contact one of the organizers: Ben Levitt (BLevitt@CSUChico.edu), Thomas Mattman (TMattman@CSUChico.edu), or Aaron Wootton (wootton@up.edu).