We kicked off the year in September with a “Parents” Welcome Drinks. This is the launch of our award-winning Family Scheme which sees higher year students buddy up with new mathematicians.  One this night the volunteers are introduced to each other and a night of ice-breaking festivities follows. We then had the rest of Fresher's week which involved our Welcome to MathSoc Presentation, Where's Wally Campus Tour and Family Quiz; all with the aim of introducing the new students to life at Birmingham (with lots of free pizza).

Throughout the Autumn Term we had many socials: from our annual MathSoc Bar Crawl to a games night with AstroSoc and PPS, Laser Tag and our traditional Christmaths Night out. These socials were all a lot of fun and bought together many members from all sorts of backgrounds. Also in first semester we launched our brand new Tutor Scheme which take volunteers to a local school where students can develop not only tutoring skills and gain mentoring experience as the pupils develop their maths skills. Our sports teams performed consistently high with MathSoc FC finishing at the top of their league. We also had our Careers Networking Event, which doubled in size in comparison to last year, where we invited alumni to join us and talk about their experiences with graduate jobs and internships.

In Spring Term got busier and busier! We organised even more socials from a trip to the local comedy club, pub golf and Societies Night. In the early days of January we even took to the skies and travelled all the way to the beautiful city of Budapest! We also had an exciting opportunity as members were invited to join with CSS and ChemSoc at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ offices in Birmingham to take part in an insight day, PwC: Innovate. Disrupt. Enable. As well as all this we hosted our second annual EPS University Challenge. We collected teams from 9 different societies across the College to take part in an intense quiz, all battling for the pride of winning and some University goodies kindly donated by the Alumni Office. This night was part of Carnival RAG’s Adopt a Charity, to help raise money for our charity of the year: Mind.

MathSoc Mind 2017

In mid-February we took not only our members but students from all over the University to the London Science Museum. This event was funded by Hands Up money generously donated by Birmingham Alumni – so thank you!

Our Volunteering Scheme recruited yet another wave of volunteers to fund raise during "Fundraising February". Our volunteers organised a bucket shake in Harborne with some amazing fancy dress, held a super successful (and tasty) cake sale and also organised a really busy pub quiz with over £100’s worth of vouchers. All these events totalled to an amazing £1,000.26! The final part of our volunteering scheme recruited a group of 20 keen runners, to take on the Coventry Half Marathon for the third year in a row with more participants than ever before.

We draw this epic year to a glamorous close at the biggest ever MathSoc Spring Ball. We suited up and dressed up at Villa Park and celebrated the great achievements of our members. Here's what our Head of School, Paul Flavell, had to say about the ball: "The Ball was the best ever – I am in a position to judge; the first one I attended was in 1991!"

MathSoc Spring Ball 2017

To top it all off one of our committee Heather Collis was shortlisted for Best Student Rep at the University’s Guild Awards, our outgoing treasurer Calum Ridyard won the Outstanding Individual Contribution Award, and MathSoc as a whole won Most Improved Student Group. We really did clean up that night!

MathSoc Guild Awards 2017

The committee for this year is just finishing and the new one about to take over. Here is MathSoc's elected committee for 2017/18:
President – Curtis Collins
Vice-President – Joseph Pipa-Harding
Treasurer – Harry Burke
Social Secretaries – Emma Bullock & Lilly Cummins
Sports Officer – Freddie Offley
Volunteering Officer – Sam Davies
Secretary – Zoe Hacking
Publicity Officer – Rachel Pickering

Of course, we cannot forget the EPS Societies Awards which will be taking place in June. I'm sure you'll all agree that we have achieved so much this year, and it would be great you would help us celebrate! Please nominate MathSoc for which ever awards you feel are suitable!

From myself and the committee, this has been the most wonderful year, and it's sad to see it end! But now it's time for Curtis and his committee to take the reins and keep up MathSoc's successes.

Ed Wong
Outgoing President
MathSoc love x