Beyond the Formula Endowed Scholarships

Monroe Community College Professor Emeritus Bob Johnson and colleagues from the Mathematics Department started the Beyond the Formula Scholarship as a legacy of the Beyond the Formula Statistics Conferences held at Monroe Community College. Proceeds from the conferences started the scholarship in 2007, and a matching challenge gift from Bob and Barbara Johnson and numerous gifts from mathematics faculty endowed the scholarship in 2009.

After attending a mathematics conference in 1996, Professor Johnson came away realizing the teachers of introductory statistics needed a conference dealing only with the teaching of statistics. In the mid 1990s, statistics was well on its way to becoming one of the most needed and popular college courses, and mathematics teachers had many questions/concerns about the best way to teach it. Beyond the Formula Statistics Conferences originated at MCC in 1997 under the leadership of Johnson and several Mathematics Department colleagues. The annual two-day conference was designed to promote excellence in the teaching of introductory statistics by presenting the latest developments in teaching, to those faculty teaching introductory statistics at four-year colleges, two-year colleges and high schools.

Mathematics and Statistics are more than collections of numbers, data, formulas, problems to be solved and the methods to solve or analyze. When students are studying mathematics or statistics in the classroom the mission is to learn and understand the ways to look at, and methods to organize and quantify the situation. The goal is to attain a level of understanding that is well beyond the ability to identify and use the appropriate formula and methodologies needed to find the answers. At this level of understanding, students will be better prepared as they meet the challenges of problem solving and decision making in their personal lives and in their vocations. Numbers (the most easily recognized part of mathematics and statistics) are a major part of every aspect of our life – look around, it is hard to find information about anything without it, including numbers, mathematical models or statistical information.

The purpose of these [three] scholarships is to recognize and honor mathematics students at Monroe Community College who have excelled in their understanding of mathematics and/or statistics well beyond the formula level and plan to continue studying mathematics and/or statistics, as well as pursue careers in mathematics, statistics, mathematics education, statistics education, or related fields.

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