The jerry heuer maa-ncs team competition

The North Central Section’s team contest is held each year in mid November, two Saturdays (12 days) before Thanksgiving.  Teams of up to three undergraduate students work collaboratively at their home campuses on a series of ten problems from 9:00am until noon.  Solutions are scanned and submitted online.  Results and awards are announced after each problem is scored by our grading team.

Problems range in difficulty, and the contest is intended to be more accessible than national competitions, such as the Putnam.  We encourage faculty to recruit students of all levels to take part!

The contest was founded as the MAA-NCS Team Competition in 1997 by Dr. Jerry Heuer, who continued to run the competition for 23 years.  In honor of his decades of service, the North Central Section voted in October 2019 to name the contest in his honor.  

See below for more information about registration, past problems, solutions, and contest results.

  • Registration for the Heuer Contest is a two-step process. 

    1. The Pre-registration Form typically opens in early October.  On this form faculty identify who will supervise the team(s) from each school, and estimate their number of teams. This number is not binding, but is helpful for planning purposes.

    2. In the week before the contest, details about submitting final rosters and paying the entry fees are emailed to the faculty supervisors at each school.

    During the week of the contest, faculty supervisors also receive logistical information about printing the problems, proctoring the contest, and the process for submitting solutions.

    When the registration opens each year, the information is published on this webpage, posted in  a message in the North Central Section Community on MAA Connect, and sent via email to faculty members who have supervised teams in recent years (or otherwise expressed an interest in the contest).  If you would like to be added to that email list, please contact rogness@umn.edu.  

    See below for details about the 2025 contest.  This will be updated in October for the 2026 competition.

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    Join us for the 27th Annual Heuer NCS Teams Contest!

    November 15, 2025 | 9:00AM – 12:00PM | On your campus!

    Registration for the event is open!

    Here’s what you need to sign up:

    • Supervising faculty member name and email address.

    • Estimated number of teams from your campus.

    Link for pre-registration: 2025 Heuer Team Contest Pre-Registration

    We do our best to accommodate late registrations, but we ask that the pre-registration form be filled out by Friday, November 7, 2025, if possible.  There is a cost of $20 per team for the 2025 contest.  Details about submitting rosters and paying the entry fees will be emailed to the supervising faculty at each school the week of the contest.

    Questions? Email rogness@umn.edu. 

  • The twenty-seventh edition of the Jerry Heuer MAA-NCS Team Competition was held on Saturday, November 15th, 2025.  There were 63 teams (and 160 students) from 21 schools in this year’s contest. Scores ranged from 96 to 12, with a median of 49.

    The first place team, with an overall score of 96, was Team CCC from Carleton College, with a very consistent performance. They were the only team to earn 8 or more points (and usually 10) on every problem!

    Mini Soda from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) took second place, and two teams tied for third place: Excessively Complex Analysis from North Dakota State University and Eminent Topics from Carleton.  There were strong performances by teams from Manitoba, Minnesota State University Mankato, Macalester, Augustana, UMN-TC, Carleton, and St. Olaf to round out the top 15.

    In addition to first, second, and third place teams, we also award certificates for “Outstanding Teams,” “Meritorious Teams” and “Honorable Mention.”  View the results below to see which teams earned these honors.

  • (By Megan Breit-Goodwin)

    It is with great sadness that I share that Dr. Jerry Heuer, our colleague and friend, died on September 14, 2021. 

    Dr. Heuer shared his love of mathematics and his joy in teaching with our entire community. He was a professor of mathematics at Concordia College in Moorhead from 1956 to 1995, and remained active within the college as Professor Emeritus and Mathematician-in-Residence from 1995 until his death. He was an enthusiast of mathematics problem solving competitions and he shared his gifts with the MAA-NCS by leading the Team Competition for decades. He was honored for his 28 years of service to the MAA-NCS on October 19, 2019 when the competition was renamed to The Jerry Heuer MAA-NCS Team Competition.

    It is hard to find the words to capture the profound presence and impact of Dr. Heuer in our MAA community. His love of mathematics, teaching, and problem solving has inspired many of us, and this love has been – and will be – continued to be passed down through generations of mathematicians within the North Central Section. He is deeply missed and we are grateful to celebrate him, and honor his legacy through the Jerry Heuer MAA-NCS Teams Competition.