Index:

About Math Awareness Month
Current Year's Poster
Contest Theme
Current Year's MAM Theme
Current Year's Speakers
Poster Contest History

VT Coordinators:

Diane Agud
Phone: (540) 231-8208
e-mail: agud@math.vt.edu

Catherine Stephens
Phone: (540) 231-5465
e-mail: casteph2@math.vt.edu

Related Links:

Math Awareness Month
MAA
VT Math Department
Virginia Tech

MAM Homepage

April is Mathematics Awareness Month. The Virginia Tech Department of Mathematics sponsors an annual poster contest for students in kindergarten through eighth grades to celebrate this event.

The annual poster contest was first offered in 1996 to students in the public schools of Montgomery County. In 1999, students from Giles County Public Schools were invited to participate and in 2000 local private schools were also included. Since its inception, approximately 500 students have participated annually in this activity.

Through the year 2002, the theme of the annual poster contest was selected to correspond to the theme chosen each year by National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) for the World's Largest Math Event (WLME), which occurred the last Friday in April. Since 2002 was the final year for the NCTM's development of materials for the WLME, beginning with the 2003 poster contest, the poster theme will be chosen to correspond to one of the following, as appropriate.

1. The theme selected by the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, an organization of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
2. Should the annual Math Awareness Month Theme be inappropriate for the poster contest, an alternate theme will be chosen by the Virginia Tech Math Awareness Month Committee.

Each year the posters are judged by the faculty, staff, and students at Virginia Tech. The top ten posters from each grade level are displayed at the Math Emporium. Each grade level winner, his/her family, teacher, and principal are invited to an awards reception honoring the students' creativity. The overall winning poster is revealed at the reception. This winning poster will be displayed in the Virginia Tech Department of Mathematics Commons Room during the upcoming academic year.

The theme for the 2008 poster contest is "MATH AND TRANSPORTATION ". Theme's for past contests have included: "Math and the Human Body" (2007), "Mathematics and the Olympics" (2006), "Mathematics and Outer Space" (2005), "Everyday Mathematics" (2004), "Mathematics and Art" (2003), "Entertaining Mathematics" (2002), "Mathematics at the Fair" (2001), "Animals as Our Companions" (2000), "The Power of Nature" (1999), "World Landmarks" (1998), and "Mathematics: The Language of the Universe" (1997).