A scholarship available to lower division students of mathematics and statistics. The Mathematics and Statistics Scholarship Committee select the recipients. The scholarship is provided by a retired Associate Professor of the Department who was awarded numerous grants and scholarships while teaching at the University.
The family of Harry E.Christopher established this scholarship at the time of his death. He was associated with George C. Christopher and Sons, Inc. His children added the name of his first wife, Bob A. and his second wife, Helen M. to the scholarhip in recent years. He was married to each of these women for 32 years.
The Alan R. Elcrat "Attack the Blackboard" Memorial Fellowship fund has been established with contributions to the Wichita State University Foundation. These contributions and all subsequent additions to the fund shall be administered in accordance with the Donor’s instructions as set forth in these Guidelines for Administration and the policies and procedures approved and adopted by the Board of Directors of the Wichita State University Foundation.
Alan Elcrat was a memorable person and an influential mathematician. He described his own career as that of an academic mathematician working on theoretical questions, but he was also a gifted teacher and a dedicated Ph.D. advisor. His work focused on partial differential equations and fluid mechanics. Towards the end of his career his research was centered on theoretical and computational work for inviscid flows, computation of conformal maps, and capillary surfaces. Dr. Elcrat published 75 peer-reviewed papers, wrote two textbooks and collaborated with colleagues around the world. All the while, he continued to teach a full spectrum of undergraduate and graduate level courses in applied mathematics and analysis. During his tenure at Wichita State he helped to build the applied mathematics program, which eventually led to the Ph.D. program. He made an impact on undergraduate and graduate students, Ph.D. students, and in the field of mathematics worldwide.
Alan was intense and passionate. He had abundant energy and interest in new things throughout his entire life. He was a runner, a screener for the Tallgrass Film Festival, and an avid home-brewer. He enjoyed hiking, skiing, and traveling the world and for over forty years he was devoted to the study of Tae Kwon Do. Alan’s daughters have chosen to honor his work and his legacy by creating this fellowship to help support students with the talent and passion to continue the advancement of the field mathematics.
All fellowship support distributed from this fund will be applied to the purpose described below excepting any unforeseen future circumstances that result in a determination by the Foundation Board of Directors that the original purpose no longer best serves the interests of Wichita State University. Every effort will be made by the Foundation to contact the Donor or his/her designated representative(s) before any changes are made to these guidelines.
For more information on the fellowship please read e-horizon from April 2014. Donations may be made to the Dr. Alan R. Elcrat Memorial for WSU Mathematics Department care of the Wichita State University Foundation, 1845 Fairmount St., Wichita, KS 67260.
Josephine Braucher Fugate was twelve years old when she first encountered algebra. She attended a small high school in Humboldt, Kansas, where teachers were often required to teach subject in which they had no training. This occurred to the algebra class. Fortunately for her and a few of her friends, Josephine's mother, who had taught school in Kansas City, Missouri, prior to her marriage, was able to tutor these students after school in her home. Her mother made it seem so simple that Josephine enjoyed it and continued to take all the math offered in high school. At Kansas University, she enrolled in college algebra and trigonometry when her professor urged her to major in math. She did, and on graduation was hired to teach math in Hutchinson, Kansas. After three years, she found herself wanting to return to Kansas University to obtain a Master's degree. She applied and received a position as a graduate assistant in the department and obtained her master's two years later.
The statistics professor was leaving K.U. to goto Columbia in New York City. She suggested that they employ Josephine if she would go to summer school and take enough statistics to be able to teach it. This she did in the summer of 1929. She took statistics I and II simultaneously and a third course at the graduate level. That fall she returned to K.U. to teach full time.
She left after spring semester, 1937 to move to Wichita where her husband was trying to establish a law practice. It was the depth of the depression and they were delighted when Wichita University, the local municipal university, found she was here through contacting K.U. and hired her to teach one semester for a woman who had to take time off due to health problems.
A few years later, Josephine was appointed to the Board of Regents by the City Board of Education. While on this board, she and a few other determined members named Harry Corbin president. In 1955, after having served on the board for 15 years, Corbin asked her to become W.U.'s third Dean of Women. Josephine consented if he would also permit her to teach five hours in the Department of Math. She said that in that way, she would "know what she was doing at least one hour each day." She continued this until she resigned from Administration at age 65, but continued teaching full time in the Math Department until she was 70.
To her surprise, she enjoyed the work as Dean of Women, particularly when Dr. Rhatigan became Dean of Students. His philosophy that the purpose of the office was to help students, was congenial to Josephine and all her time at WSU was indeed pleasant.
"Professor in the dark"
by Lura Lincoln Cook
What can a mon do when his light is spent ere half his days? (Reference, Milton, Sonnet XIX, "When I consider...")
Arthur J. Hoare, who came to Fairmount College as a professor in 1906 and retired from the Municipal University of Wichita in 1944, lost the precious gift of sight in mid-career. He was not to regain it until after his retirement, when a former Fairmount student, Dr. Victor Rambo - proposed and performed a surgery that proved to be successful. But in the meantime, Hoare has persevered; and his personal brilliance had illuminated the lives of friends and students over the years. This is his story.
I remember him with his massive forehead and neatly parted white hair, standing tall and ramrod-straight in from of my college calculus class. He had just worked through and involved integration on the blackboard. "Isn't that pretty!" he beamed from behind the dark glasses that he always wore. "Isn't that a beauty!" He saw our class in his mind's eye only, for Arthur J. Hoare was almost totally blind.
After class he quickly switched from the role of mathematics professor to that of my Uncle Arthur and walked home to lunch with me. He and my aunt, childless themselves, had made it financially possible for me to attend college by inviting me to live with them. In these college years I learned to appreciate the indomitable spirit of this man, who, in spite of his handicap, carried a full teaching load and acted as chair of the mathematics department at the University of Wichita.
In 1883, when Arthur was 6 years old, his parents had sailed from England with their six young children to settle in Michigan. His father eventually opened a bakery shop in Manistee, and there Arthur graduated from high school.
In accordance with the traditions of the Old World, his father expected Arthur - the oldest son - to join him in the bakery business. But life in the New World had filled the boy with other dreams. Determine to become a teacher, he enrolled at the University of Michigan.
There followed four years of struggle. He sandwiched a wide variety of odd jobs in with the Greek and Latin and mathematics. During the summer holidays, he traveled from house to house in western Michigan and norther Ohio selling dictionaries, copies of The Progressive Speaker and assorted stereopticon views. His graduation from the university with the "Century Class" of 1900 was a triumph of resourcefulness and persistence. After several years of teaching high school while working for a master's degree, he accepted a position as professor of mathematics at Fairmount College, a small liberal arts institution in Wichita, Kansas.
The young professor, who married Lucia Lovewell from Michigan in 1907, became a leader in the academic life of the college and the area. He organized Fairmount's first summer school in 1909, and was in charge of summer school from 1911 to 1918. He established the Kansas State Association of Collegiate Mathematics in 1913 and was president for two years. Along with his teaching duties, he served first as registrar and then (beginning in 1911) as Dean of Fairmount College for nearly a decade. He stepped in as Fairmount's acting president for a six-month period in 1914.
Arthur's busy career was abruptly interrupted by tragedy in October 1919, when he awoke one morning to darkness. A condition, diagnosed as atrophy of the optic nerve, had totally destroyed the vision of his right eye and taken all but 3 percent of the vision of his left eye. He and Lucia used their meager resources in vain to seek help from specialists in Chicago and St. Louis. At last they had to accept the hard fact of his blindness. Lucia became the wage-earner for the couple by taking a teaching position at the nearby Indian Institute, but Arthur could foresee that she would not be able to work many more years since she was becoming increasingly crippled by arthritis.
Arthur was a born teacher, and he did not believe that the Lord meant him to sit out the rest of his days with folded hands. He learned to type and read Braille. He tutored the delinquent mathematics students sent to him by his colleagues. But he looked on these activities as stopgaps. He was possessed with an overwhelming determination to resume his interrupted career as a full-time professor of mathematics.
The first step toward realizing this ambition was his teaching of an evening extension class of Wichita secondary school teachers. When he had demonstrated that he could do this successfully, he was given one or two regular college classes to teach. At last, having proved his ability to satisfaction of the administration, he resumed a full-time teaching schedule in September 1922.
How was it possible for this blind man to stand, day and day, before his classes and lecture on subjects as integral calculus and differential equations? With a yardstick and compass, he drew precise diagrams on the blackboard, more by the feel than by the tiny fraction of vision in his left eye. His feats of memory were phenomenal. Every lecture had to be worked out and mastered so thoroughly that he could deliver it without notes or reminders of any sort. At one time, he was teaching five different subjects, and yet he knew each textbook that he used - the order of the chapters, the articles, the steps of the proofs and the numbers and subjects of the problems.
Facing his classes, he looked into darkness; but he knew the name of each student in every class and where he or she sat. During recitation period, no one could hope to be forgotten. His students treated him with affection and respect. On one occasion, a young man took advantage of the professor's sightlessness by cheating on a test. When that hapless student stepped out into the corridor afterwards, he found himself surrounded by five or six brawny fellow math students. "You do that again and you'll wish you'd never set foot on this campus," they told him. He never did it again.
Only Lucia could appreciate the strain that Arthur's daily routine placed on him. Although often a friendly colleague or student accompanied him, he frequently walked alone, keeping track of his location by the barely-visible silhouettes of trees and houses along the way. He refused to carry a cane but walked with apparent confidence when he crossed his classroom or descended the steps of the library. His secret was that he knew the exact number of steps between any two given objects in his familiar haunts. Of course, that knowledge did not allow for the unexpected - a know of heedless students blocking the stairs or a child's wagon left on the sidewalk for him to trip over. Year by year, the lines of tension etched themselves more deeply into his face.
Arthur acted as administrative head of his department until 1938 and taught until 1944. During these years, little Fairmount College was transformed into the Municipal University of Wichita. He expanded the mathematics department and raised its standards to keep pace with the change.
Soon after retirement, he lost he beloved Lucia. Wise, humorous, understnading and brave, she had - her friends thought - kept herself alive for years by sheer willpower because she could not bear to leave Arthur alone in the world.
The road of life held yet another turn. Arthur had so long accepted the permanence of his blindness that he was scarcely prepared for the hope of improvement held out to him in 1946 by a former student. Dr. Victor Rambo, a medical missionary home from India on furlough, told him that his right eye was hopelessly blind but that the vision of his left eye could perhaps be improved. Arthur decided to let his friend perform two operations to cut away the membranous growth that had been discovered in Rambo's examination. The operations were successful, and gradually the vision of the left eye improved until it became about 10 percent of normal.
To Arthur, the change was like a miracle. Suddenly, he was able to see the aging faces of friends he had last seen in their youth. Everything amazed him - automobile designs, short skirts, modern architecture. And colors! He could find no words glad enough to describe the gold of the dandelion carpet that covered the campus nor the spring glory of the Kansas redbuds.
Arthur died in the spring of 1961. When I returned to Wichita for his funeral, I found tangible reminders of him on the campus - his portrait in the LAS building and the Arthur J. Hoare mathematics Scholarship for needed math majors. More significant than these were the tributes of those who had known him - the informal talk at his funeral service by then-President Harry Corbin, the music of Arthur's solos played by the church organist, the request for a book from his library by a graying alumnus of the Class of 28, the affectionate words of the Shakespeare professor who had been his friend for 40 years.
Great universities are made by memories and traditions as well as books and classrooms. The University of Wichita has become The Wichita State University and expanded beyond recognition. One of its invisible foundation stones will always be the man who taught in the dark, Arthur J. Hoare.
Dr. King, a native of Douglas, Wyoming received a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Missouri, a master's degree in mathematics from WSU and a doctorate in math from the University of Kentucky.
She has an extensive teaching background including four years teaching math at WSU, one year at Washburn University, two years at the University of Kansas and over 3 years at the University of Kentucky before heading to Eastern Kentucky University where she joined the faculty in 1972 and taught until her retirement.
She has written or co-written many articles for publication including at least one math book. She has also won numerous awards and recognintion including the 1998 Mathematics Education Service and Achievement Award presented by the Kentucky Council of Teachers of Mathematics. In addition, one year earlier she won the Award for Distinguished College and University Teaching of Mathematics presented by the Kentucky Section of the Mathematical Association of America.
"Marjorie McMahon: teacher, adventurer"
by Jennifer Comes
Marjorie McMahon once attributed her long life to keeping busy and taking an interest in the people around her. "She was very spirited and enjoyed life, I think, as much as you could," said her grandniece Marsha Stromberg. "Even clear up to the end, she felt bad because she couldn't contribute and keep busy and I think that frustrated her because she was so used to being active."
Miss McMahon, who was thought to have been the oldest living alumna of Fairmount College, from which Wichita State University was founded, died Nov 3, 1992 of complications from a stroke. She was 100 years old.
Miss McMahon was born Dec. 18, 1891, in Anthony, the daughter of the town lawyer and the school-teacher. She graduated from Anthony High School in 1901. As a student at Fairmount College, she was on the staff of The Sunflower, the campus newspaper, and lettered in basketball, oratory and debate. She graduated from Fairmount in 1913. She earned a master's degree from Columbia University in New York in 1931.
Miss McMahon taught school in Anthony; Spring Township; south of Anthony; Andover; and at Robinson and Roosevelt Intermediate schools in Wichita. She spent the last 20 years of her 47-year career teaching math as East High.
"She was a strict teacher, with very high expectations of her students" Stromberg said. "She felt that if you treat them fairly, they'd do anything you'd ask of them."
Many of Miss McMahon's students kept in touch with her over the years, she said.
Her great-aunt had the soul of an adventurer, Stromberg said. In 1923, Miss McMahon and three other teachers decided to take a cross-country camping trip in a Model T touring car. When they ran out of money, they had to stop in Green Bay, Wis. To pick cherries. One summer, Miss McMahon sold encyclopedias; another summer she waited tables in Estes Park, Colo.
Her favorite adventures often included her best friend, Ina Fulton. Together the two teachers bought and operated a summer resort on Round Lake, near Brainerd, Minn.
"They ran it every summer for 25 years" said Miss McMahon's nice Mary Guerrant, Stromberg's mother. "And the same people seemed to go back year after year. They did have a wonderful time up there."
Miss McMahon was a longtime volunteer with the American Red Cross' Midway-Kansas Chapter, and was a 75-year member of the Anthony Order of the Eastern Star. She was also a member of the Wichita White Shrine and Plymouth Congregational Church in Wichita.
In addition to Guerrant and Stromberg, Miss McMahon is survived by her great-nephews, E.J. and Robert Guerrant.
The Pi Mu Epsilon Mathematical Scholarship is a scholarship available to upper division students in Mathematics.
For additional scholarship and fellowship information (Awarding Policies, Application Deadlines, etc):
Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Scholarships and Fellowships