Clark is a past NC State Director, past Webmaster and past Chair of the Section, and currently chairs its Bylaws Revision Committee. After two years of work on the revision the Section voted its approval of the revision at its Business Meeting on March 27. The bylaws revision not only streamlines the organization’s governance but also builds more diversity and inclusion into its processes聽through how it structures its selection committees.

Clark presented “A (Nearly) Infinitesimally Quick Introduction to the Surreal Numbers” at the meeting on March 28.

While at the conference he also attended talks on the impact of AI on mathematical pedagogy as well as various software packages supporting new mathematical texts.

Clark has been a member of the MAA since 1978, when he joined as a student member. While at the conference he also attended talks on abstract algebra and pedagogy as well as a panel discussion on how to preserve our disciplinary values of inclusion in the current adverse political climate and the organization’s business meeting.

Clark is in his sixth year as faculty ombudsperson and will continue for another three-year term.

Clark has been a member of the section since 1988. While there, he presented reports to the Executive Committee and the full section at its business meeting on the status of the revision of the section bylaws. He also presented his work titled “How Many Dice Do You Need for a Bell Curve?”

The meeting covered a discussion of techniques for helping visitors to ombuds’ offices articulate their concerns as well as anonymized case histories covering different issues.

Clark has served as faculty ombudsperson at 黑料不打烊 for five years.

Clark concluded six years as chair of the MAA’s Committee on Minicourses and monitored one of the minicourses that his committee selected on behalf of the MAA.

In addition, he spoke on 鈥淎nimations in Multivariable Calculus,鈥� about how to construct meaningful animations that advance student understanding and intuition about three-dimensional objects.

Clark served on the Executive Committee from 1994 to 1997 as North Carolina state director, 2003 to 2010 as webmaster, 2016-2017 as chair-elect, 2017 to 2019 as chair, and 2019 to 2020 as past-chair. During his time as section chair he presided over the last revision of the section’s bylaws (making them more inclusive in substantive ways) in 2018. He currently serves on the national MAA’s Committee on Bylaws and met with the Southeastern Section’s Executive Committee on March 14 to discuss the logistics involved in bylaws revision.

On Friday, March 15, Clark presented a talk on “Partially Ordered Sets and Designing Classes in Object-Oriented Programming.”听

That afternoon he, along with the rest of the audience of a plenary session, saw a public discussion of a historic wrong. As part of his responsibility as webmaster to provide section members with convenient access to import information, Clark had scanned from paper copies of an alternative history of participation in the section by mathematicians of color. One of the stories in that history described how in 1960 four mathematicians of color were turned away from the annual meeting of the section. They knew it was going to happen and they bravely placed themselves there to make sure the segregation would not go unnoticed.

A University of Tennessee-Knoxville mathematics professor, Jeneva Clark (no relation) tracked down the surviving member of that quartet, Bill Brodie, a retired mathematics instructor in Florida. At the plenary session the audience participated in a Q&A with Professor Brodie, talking about his experiences with civil rights protests, including sharing a jail cell with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at one point. At the end of the session the leadership of the Southeastern Section apologized for Professor Brodie’s treatment in the past and reaffirmed that the Section was open and affirming of all who love mathematics.

(I don’t cry easily but my tears were flowing. It was beautiful.)

Clark is serving his second three-year term as Faculty Ombudsperson. A description of that role can be found on the Faculty Ombudsperson webpage.