Norwich University’s Robert Poodiack, professor and chair of the Mathematics Department, has won the 2022 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Certificate for Meritorious Service for the Northeastern Section.
This award is presented to someone who has displayed dedicated service at a sectional or national level, and is rotated among the association’s sections; each section may nominate someone every five years. This is the first time anyone from Norwich University has received an association award.
This award reflects all of the service Poodiack has contributed to the association’s northeastern section over the years. He has been an association member since 1997.
Poodiack has served as the local arrangements chair for Northeastern Section meetings held at Norwich in 2001 and 2011, and helped bring another meeting to Norwich in 2017. He created the Collegiate Math Competition in 2006, which has run annually since then at the section’s fall meetings. Poodiack led the competition until he took over as section chair, a position he held from 2009 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, Poodiack ran the section’s website, redesigning and updating it.
Poodiack now helps create Collegiate Math Competition problems and reviews and scores student papers. He has also served as chair, vice chair, and past chair of the association’s Northeastern Section.
“Rob lives the ethos of Norwich University’s ‘service to others before self’ and we are proud that he was recognized for his outstanding service,” College of Science and Mathematics Dean Michael McGinnis said.
Poodiack was announced the winner of the Meritorious Service Award for the Northeastern Section on Nov. 20 at the Mathematical Association of America’s Northeastern Section fall meeting, held virtually over Zoom. He’ll receive the award at the association’s national meeting, MathFest, in August 2022 in Philadelphia.
“I’m honored and appreciative that the selection committee thought of me for this award, especially since the Northeastern Section has so many people performing exemplary service at all levels,” Poodiack said. “Since I joined the MAA in 1997 as a graduate student, the members of the Northeastern Section have been nothing but nurturing and welcoming. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with them for the past 24 years and look forward to continued service.”
Norwich University is a diversified academic institution that educates traditional-age students and adults in a Corps of Cadets and as civilians. Norwich offers a broad selection of traditional and distance-learning programs culminating in baccalaureate and graduate degrees. Norwich University was founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge of the U.S. Army and is the oldest private military college in the United States of America. Norwich is one of our nation's six Senior Military Colleges and the birthplace of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). www.norwich.edu