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Shirley McBay, Pioneer Mathematician, Dies at 86


This result reportPublished in 1990, he came to a conclusion that many people already knew: that the education pipeline has deteriorated and that improving Black enrollment requires a wholesale rethinking of education from kindergarten to grade 12.

Dr. “Education opportunities, and therefore educational attainment, for many minority youth lag behind the chances, choices and performance of non-minority youth,” McBay and colleagues wrote in the introduction to the report. “The current education system in mass education for the mass production model is insufficient for the demands that the 21st century will place on this nation.”

That same year, Dr. McBay left the deanship and received permission to run the Quality Education Network for Minorities, a spin-off of the MIT project. What was supposed to be a two-year project ended up consuming the rest of her career, as she found her calling as a strong and energetic advocate for students of color.

Not only did it help them get into graduate programs; he also encouraged them when they came. He has held conferences, taught students and new faculty how to apply for grants, and invited them to review panels.

“If he believed in you and saw you have a strong work ethic, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for you,” Tasha Innis, a mathematician and research associate at Spelman, said in an interview. “It pushed you to new heights.”

Shirley Ann Mathis was born on May 4, 1935, in Bainbridge, Ga., a small town in the southwest corner of the state. He was raised by his mother, Annie Bell (Washington) Mathis, a cook and Avon marketer; His father, James Mathis, was largely absent from his life.

Showcasing a gift for numbers from an early age, Shirley had fun outdoing much older students in math competitions. Augusta, Ga., was just 15 when she enrolled at Paine College, and was just 19 when she graduated in chemistry in 1954.



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