Dear Colleague,

We invite your undergraduate students to the 30th Annual Virginia Tech Regional Mathematics Contest. The contest will be held from 9:00a.m. to 11:30a.m. on Saturday November 1, 2008. Last year 397 students participated, representing 67 colleges and universities in Virginia and the adjoining states. For more information, go to

http://www.math.vt.edu/people/plinnell/Vtregional/

Here you will find among other things,

1. The institutional registration form: please fill in this form, sign it and return it to me.

2. The instructions for exam day.

3. The individual registration form for exam day; you will need one copy of this for each student who takes the exam.

4. This year's exam, which will be available after Monday, October 27, will be in pdf format. You will need a password to download it from our website, and another password to open it. You will also need the free Acrobat reader (version 5 or later). When I have received the filled out registration form from you, I will give you the passwords. I will also give you a two digit number for your institution (this is for filling out the registration number on the individual registration form), and a third password to enable the student to access his/her score off the WEB after the exam.

You may enter as many students as you like for the contest. However if you cannot cope with this electronic method of administrating the contest, then I can arrange to distribute the exam as hard copies, but then the number of students you may enter will be limited to 10.

Cash awards will have a total value of $750 with funds provided by the College of Arts and Sciences and Mathematics Department of Virginia Tech.

The contest papers will be graded by our faculty. The names of the participants and their institutions are not written on the submitted papers, thereby assuring anonymity for participants during the grading process.

We hope that your department will choose to participate this year. If you do so, please designate a faculty representative who will handle local arrangements and administer the contest on your campus on November 1, 2008. Also, please return the institutional registration form by October 8, 2008. If you have any questions, call me at (540) 231-2764, or use e-mail linnell@math.vt.edu

Sincerely yours,

Peter A. Linnell