Student in the Spotlight Counting on Connections: Rhode Island, North Carolina, Arizona, Indiana
Cristian Potter’s story begins in
hour day, Potter was drawn to both the discipline of mathematics and the genuine warmth and welcome of the department. But choosing ECU was not easy – Potter would be giving up a free Ivy League education and would have to work while taking classes. But he had an “aha” moment in Dr. Said Said’s Mathematical Statistics class: Potter says, “At that moment, I decided that I had to be a math major. Really, choosing ECU was the best decision of my entire educational life.” Since that choice, Potter
Providence, Rhode Island, where he was born into a selfdescribed “dysfunctional childhood situation.” From that unprepossessing start, Potter has gone on to garner academic awards, to help shape lives of mentees, and to aspire to not to be an embarrassment to his children. Identified early as exceptionally bright intellectually, he recounts vividly his fifth grade experience where, in his academically accelerated class, he fabricated a family life that did not include the realities of an unemployed father and a welfare mother. Then, high SAT scores “ At that moment, I decided that I had to be a landed him a place at Howard University in 1996, but math major. Really, choosing ECU was the unable to function academically, upon the death of his best decision of my entire educational life.” mother in 1999, he returned home to Rhode Island after he had the children (Cristian and Abayomi) whom he was not going to disappoint. He worked in has received ECU’s Eron-Vittitow Award for Excellence in the public library to pay his student loans and eventually Mathematics and the John B. Davis Award for Excellence in married his new partner and shining inspiration, Ornella Statistics, two important undergraduate recognitions. But Potter, who would later head to her medical residency in Dr. Said (Graduate Program Director), Dr. Chris Jantzen, Psychiatry at ECU’s Brody School of Medicine. and math department chair, Dr. Johannes Hattingh; as well Turning his life around, Cris attended the Community as Department Chair Dr. Ericson, Dr. Arthur Liu and Dr. College of Rhode Island where he maintained a 4.0 Rothman of the Economics Department all push students grade point average and was named a Coca Cola New to go beyond the baccalaureate degree. Also instrumental Century Scholar. In a geographically close-knit state like in Potter’s academic journey at ECU are Gwen Hardin Rhode Island, Cris went directly from his community (Administrative Assistant in the Math Department) and college experience to Brown University. He comments Cindy Mills (Administrative Assistant in the Economics that community colleges often provide a direct pipeline Department. Potter’s first choice for upper level study was to their own local college and universities, so he had yet North Carolina State University, but the family desire to learn about the wider higher education choices that for four distinct seasons led to looking at wider options, might be available to him. After a year at Brown, Potter especially in the Chicago area. joined his wife in Greenville (Potter’s first North Carolina Potter attended a conference in Phoenix, Arizona, and connection) and visited with Dr. M. S. Ravi in Harriot over lunch chatted about soybeans (followed by Indiana, College’s Department of Mathematics. Impressed that North Carolina is the nation’s leading producer) with Dr. Dr. Ravi would come in to talk to him on a non-office George McCabe, renowned statistician, Purdue University
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