SummerMath codirector and mathematics student Charlene Morrow (bottom left) is known as a problem solver in Margaret Robinson's Complex Analysis class. Robinson is at the far right. Photo by Fred LeBlanc.

Most people would be satisfied with going to graduate school once, but not Charlene Morrow, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, codirects Mount Holyoke's SummerMath program, and is a lecturer in the College's psychology and education department. If she has her way, she'll take on the rigors of graduate coursework again—this time in mathematics.

After a career in teaching, with a focus on the psychology of women and community psychology, and having worked as a clinician, Morrow has spent the last fifteen years employed as a math educator with her mathematician husband, Jim, codirector of MHC's nationally acclaimed summer math program for girls in eighth through twelfth grades. Although Morrow had made valuable contributions to the program—including changing its social structure by writing grants to ensure diversity and focusing on curricular innovation—and had even cowritten a book about women mathematicians (Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary, 1998), she longed for formal training in mathematics.

In addition to supporting her professional work, Morrow had another reason for wanting to study math—a sense of unfulfilled potential. “My last formal mathematics course was Calculus I in 1970,” she says. “I wanted to fulfill a desire left by the wayside when I opted out of the high school math curriculum after three classes. Like many females then (and to a sad degree, now), I was treated as if my competence in math was a ‘dirty little secret,' best left in the closet.” A $70,000 National Science Foundation grant under the Professional Opportunities for Women in Research and Education (POWRE) program, awarded to Morrow in August 1999, has enabled her to pursue a dream she has had for thirty years—to pursue formal mathematical training and explore her strengths in problem solving and reasoning.

The grant provides funding and release time for Morrow to develop enrichment materials for high school and college students that “offer challenging problems to solve, biographical information about some women mathematicians, and a sense of how they came to be doing what they do,” she says. The funds are also enabling her to take six undergraduate mathematics courses and to immerse herself in an academic experience in which she is clearly reveling. “I have never been so purely delighted to be taking classes as I have been over the past three semesters in my endeavor to learn some challenging mathematics,” she says. “I've spent many late-night hours on my homework, but I have been so completely intellectually engaged that time has just flown by. I needed to fill in a lot of gaps along the way, but I have managed to do this with regular homework collaboration sessions with other students in the class, and some tutoring.”

Amazingly, Morrow began her second career as a student by taking two 300-level classes, and she has gone on to complete many of the courses required for a mathematics major. Although she credits her younger counterparts with possessing more skills, Morrow views her “incredible motivation to learn” and her problem-solving skills as her greatest strengths. Morrow is currently enrolled in Complex Analysis, taught by Margaret Robinson, associate professor of mathematics, with whom she studied abstract algebra during her first MHC semester. She credits Robinson, and her other MHC professors, with encouraging and supporting her. Something must be working, as she has been “very successful,” she says.

Morrow's classmates and professor view her as a valued member of the Complex Analysis class. Says Vaughn Barry '02, “If we are all confused (Char included) about something and yelling out different approaches to a problem, she's usually the one that can take all the ideas and turn them into something relevant. I am impressed that she has a family, writes books, teaches, and still makes it to classes and study groups—and brings us homemade cookies. She brings a refreshingly different perspective to Complex Analysis that makes math fun and easy.” Robinson appreciates Morrow as a colleague and a student. “It goes without saying that Char does excellent work as a mathematics student,” she says, “but she is so articulate and full of insight about the way one learns mathematics that just having her in the class makes me more attuned to what learning the material is like for students. She appreciates the power of thinking abstractly, and having her in class brings makes it very clear to the other students that the ability to generalize and think abstractly is one of the things they are learning. She has been a great help with student mathematics culture. She makes the informal student gatherings to work on problems much more productive for the student groups, and she has helped me a lot with students who are getting lost for one reason or another.”

Morow is equally enthusiastic about Robinson. “I have received incredible support from members of the mathematics department here,” she says. “They allowed me to try my abilities in courses I wasn't technically prepared to take and expressed confidence that I could do this. I have been able to see how fortunate our math students are to have professors who involve students not only in the subject matter, but in the culture of mathematics. Margaret never fails to inspire us to feel that we can learn any material, no matter how befuddled we might have been about last night's homework. She is always willing to try to explain things in a new way, from a new angle. As a result of ideas inspired by Harriet Pollatsek in an independent study in graph theory, I have been able to connect some material from that course to my own hobby of origami.”

Of late, Morrow has been spreading over the air waves and at the podium the message that mathematics can be accessible to many people in many different ways. As part of a mathematics department colloquium series at Westfield State College several weeks ago, she gave a talk on using graphs to color origami polyhedra. In late October, Morrow was interviewed on Math Medley, an hour-long radio show recorded live. Hosted by Pat Kenschaft, professor of mathematics at Montclair State University, the show is produced in Phoenix and airs throughout Arizona and in Providence, Rhode Island. In the pièce de résistance of her grant, she will travel to Australia for three weeks this winter to consult with Cheryl Praeger, a renowned mathematician, about coming up with some problems related to her work for use in the enrichment materials Morrow is developing. Morrow will also be delivering three talks down under.

Her course work at Mount Holyoke drawing to a close, Morrow hopes to continue her mathematics quest at the graduate level. She is even considering going on for a second Ph.D.