Sylvia Bozeman facts for kids

Sylvia D. Trimble Bozeman, born in 1947, is an amazing African American mathematician and a dedicated teacher of math. She has spent her career helping students, especially women, succeed in the world of mathematics.

Early Life and Learning

Growing Up in Alabama

Sylvia Bozeman was born on August 1, 1947, in Camp Hill, Alabama. She was the third of five children. Her father, Horace T. Sr., worked with numbers as an insurance agent. But it was her mother, Robbie Jones, who first helped Sylvia love math.

Sylvia went to schools in Camp Hill that were only for Black students. Her teachers and parents always told her to keep learning. Her high school math teacher, Mr. Frank Holley, made math even more interesting. He even stayed after school to teach trigonometry, a subject not usually offered.

College and Graduate School

In 1964, Sylvia finished Edward Bell High School. She then went to Alabama A&M University to study math. During her summers, she worked on projects at NASA and Harvard University. She graduated in 1968 as the second-highest-ranking student.

After college, Sylvia and her husband, Robert, who was also a mathematician, moved to Vanderbilt University. They both started their graduate studies there. Sylvia earned her master's degree in 1970. She faced challenges because she hadn't taken some math classes that other students had. She worked hard to learn these subjects on her own.

Becoming a Math Doctor and Teacher

Earning Her PhD

Sylvia Bozeman believed in staying "connected" to math through teaching and learning. While her husband Robert finished his own math studies, Sylvia taught part-time at Vanderbilt and Tennessee State University. During this time, they had a son and a daughter.

Sylvia's research focused on how math can be used to understand complex systems and process images. She also worked to help groups of people who were not often seen in math. In 1980, she earned her PhD. Her special project was called "Representations of Generalized Inverses of Fredholm Operators." She was one of the first Black women in the U.S. to earn a PhD in math.

Teaching at Spelman College

In 1974, Dr. Bozeman started teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Spelman is a college for Black women. Her husband Robert also taught at a nearby historically Black college. For almost 40 years, she taught math at Spelman.

At Spelman, she worked with other amazing mathematicians like Shirley Mathis McBay and Etta Zuber Falconer. They were all working to make Spelman's science and math programs even better. Sylvia started as an instructor and became a full professor in 1991. She taught many different math classes, from calculus to abstract algebra. She also loved helping students and new teachers.

In 1993, Dr. Bozeman started the Center for the Scientific Applications of Mathematics at Spelman College. She also served as a Vice Provost. She retired from Spelman in 2013, after 39 years of dedicated service.

The EDGE Program

Sylvia Bozeman helped create a special program called Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education (EDGE). This program helps women who are starting graduate school in math. Dr. Bozeman noticed that women sometimes react differently to their studies than men. For example, women might feel very upset if they get a B on an exam, while men might think it's great.

The EDGE program helps students form study groups and learn how to share and receive information. This is very important for success in graduate school. In 2007, the EDGE Program was honored by the American Mathematical Society for how well it worked.

Awards and Recognition

Dr. Bozeman's work in math and her efforts to help women in math have been recognized many times. Her research has been supported by important groups like the Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, and NASA.

President Obama even appointed her to a special committee that helps choose winners for the National Medal of Science. Here are some of her many awards and honors:

• She received the Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award from Alabama A&M University in 1996.
• Spelman College gave her the President's Faculty Award for Distinguished Service in 1995.
• She won the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America in 1995.
• In 1997, she became the first African-American to be a Section Governor in the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
• She was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.
• In 2012, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
• She was chosen as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in their very first group in 2017.
• In 2019, she received the first MAA Award for Inclusivity.
• She was honored by Mathematically Gifted & Black in 2017 for Black History Month.
• She is even featured in a deck of playing cards that highlights important women mathematicians.