It is a testimony to our friendly and vibrant atmosphere that many retirees continue to come to the department on a regular basis, participating in seminars, discussions, and teaching an occasional course. Many of our emeriti also remain very active in their service to the mathematics community at large.

Georgia Benkart has been appointed to a 4-year term on the Board of Trustees of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) starting in 2011. MSRI is one of the leading institutes promoting mathematics in the nation.

Georgia also just finished a term as the President of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). The organization celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2011 with a conference, "40 Years and Counting: AWM's Celebration of Women in Mathematics" on September 17-18, at the new NSF-sponsored Institute for Computational and Experimental Mathematics (ICERM) at Brown University. Georgia was one of the organizers along with Kristin Lauter, the head of the Cryptography Group at Microsoft Research, and the current AWM President Jill Pipher, who is also the Director of ICERM. The meeting featured 4 plenary talks and 18 special sessions on a wide range of topics in pure and applied mathematics, and over 300 participants attended.

We are happy to have Robert Wilson, one of our best teachers, still working part time after retirement. Bob has won the Wisconsin Math Professor of the Year award from the Mathematical Association of America in 2007, and UW-Madison Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2008. Bob is receiving another "Honored Instructor Award" from the University Housing for his calculus class this semester.