Donor Profile
Giving Back by the Numbers
Dr. Gloria Gilmer is an international expert in math education and ethnomathematics.
Gloria Ford Gilmer, Ph.D., ’49 By Eric Addison
Throughout her long professional career, Gloria F. Gilmer, Ph.D. has been recognized and honored for her pioneering work in mathematics, mathematics education and social justice. But at her core, the Morgan graduate and William Proctor Mathematics Award winner, Class of 1949, has always been a problem-solver, she says. “I am very interested in accomplishing things, really solving problems,” she says. “They can be mathematical problems, racial problems, people problems.” While an undergrad at Morgan majoring in mathematics, Dr. Gilmer coauthored the first two non-Ph.D.thesis, peer-reviewed articles published by an African-American woman in her field. After graduating from Morgan, she completed the Master of Arts program in math at the University of Pennsylvania and took that degree to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where she worked for a short time as an exterior ballistics mathematician. Dr. Gilmer decided to return to academia, this time as a professor at Hampton Institute. But she says she wasn’t much of a teacher until two years later when she came back to Morgan State. “My people said they would bring me back to Morgan and teach me how to teach,” Dr. Gilmer says. “Dr. Clarence Stephens, my most influential mentor, was still there. When I was a student at Morgan, he told me his major conjecture was to prove that anybody who really wanted to learn mathematics 16
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could do so if the environment was suitable. He really worked with me so I would know how to work with students…. I owe my passion for teaching to Stephens.” Dr. Gilmer later married, had two children, held numerous jobs in education and earned a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Marquette University. She believes educators often overlook the importance of making emotional connections between students and the subject matter. “Teachers must spend some time trying to find out where the students’ interests lie. Then begin to plug in the value of mathematics,” she says. Her 1998 article “Mathematical Patterns in African American Hairstyles” is an example of how she incorporates this principle into her approach to education. Born and raised in Baltimore and a longtime resident of Milwaukee, Wis., Dr. Gilmer has a well-earned, international reputation as an expert in math education and ethnomathematics, the mathematical practices of identifiable cultural groups. Among the many highlights of her resume, she was the founding president of the International Study Group on Ethnomathematics, in 1985, and served as president for a decade. The group will have its next meeting in 2013 in Mozambique. She was also the first black female member of the Board of Governors of the Mathematical Association of America and president and CEO of the educational research and development firm MathTech, Inc.
Today, she often serves as a remote mentor for young women aspiring to math careers, strives to save brilliant black men by reforming the criminal justice system in Milwaukee and does other volunteer work to solve problems and improve society. Lately, she has been very active with the NAACP, striving to keep the organization’s work relevant to the problems of today. She has always been an active Morgan alumnus and plans to be more so since meeting MSU President Dr. David Wilson, Dr. Gilmer says. “Another Morgan alumnus and I had dinner with him in Madison last year before he came to Morgan, and we each donated $25,000 to Morgan,” she says. “One of my early students has cancer of the spine,” Dr. Gilmer relates. “I was talking to her one day, and she said to me, ‘You are a figure almost larger than life.’ She said I protected her and my other students, that I really spoke out for them and encouraged them to work together. “Well, that’s the way I feel about my mentor Dr. Stephens,” she says. “And that’s the mark Morgan left on me.”