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2009 UNM-PNM Winners and Teachers

The UNM-PNM Statewide Mathematics Competition gives the students of New Mexico a chance to show o® their mathematical skills and possibly win gold for their e®orts. Middle School and High School students from all over the state compete in the challenging tworound competition. The first round takes place in November at the students' local school.

Around the top 25 percent of the students taking the first round are invited to the UNM Campus in February for a lecture by a prominent mathematician followed by the second round of the competition. Like the Math Olympiad or the Putnam Exam, the solutions to the final round must be justi¯ed rigorously. Hence, we grade problems for exposition as well as content.
We have been fortunate to have the support of the PNM Foundation to award the top students and their teachers monetarily in each grade level at the UNM-PNM Annual Awards Banquet for the winners. PNM has also supported the t-shirt mementos that we have given to all the students who make it to the second round.

2009 UNM-PNM Overall Winner Peter Kalugin of La Cueva

Currently, we have around 1000 students who participate in the exam annually. Increasing the number of students involved throughout the state is one of our current goals. This year we plan to open a room here at the UNM campus and possibly at other regional schools to accommodate interested students who do not have the opportunity to take the exam at their own campus.

In addition to the competition, we have begun to post Problems of the Month to our webpage http://math.unm.edu/~vassilev/pbs.html. We hope that students throughout the
state will challenge themselves mathematically with these problems in preparation for the competition all year.

2009 UNM-PNM Overall 2nd Place Kristin Cordwell of Manzano

2009 UNM-PNM Overall 3rd Place Jack Ingalls of Academy