Mathematician Who Pushed for Diversity in STEM
As a child, she was able to easily solve math problems for herself. As an adult, she changed her focus from pure mathematics to helping underserved students.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Shirley McBay (SM) was born in a small town in Georgia. She was raised by her mother, a cook, and an Avon (home products) spokesperson. Her father was largely absent from her life.
CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
Showing a gift for numbers at an early age, SM reveled in math competitions, besting much older students.
EDUCATION
At age 15, SM enrolled in college, graduating at age 19 with a degree in chemistry. She followed her Bachelor’s degree with two graduate degrees: Master’s in chemistry and later, both a Master’s and a Doctorate (PhD) in mathematics.
CHALLENGE – FIRST BLACK STUDENT TO RECEIVE A Ph.D. FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Having excelled within a racially segregated elementary school and being the first minority to achieve a doctorate from a major southern university, SM was undeterred being in a minority. “It’s not always a pleasant time to be an African-American mathematician, even in 2021,” said a university colleague.
FIRST CAREER PATH
Despite her love of chemistry, SM decided against it as a career and entered a doctoral program in mathematics in Illinois. By then, she was married with two sons and found the stress of living so far from her family to be too much.
CHANGE #1
So, SM returned to Georgia, where she taught mathematics at Spelman College (an HBCU – ‘Historically Black College or University) for nine years, building its mathematics department into a campus powerhouse and then creating the college’s Division of Natural Sciences.
CHANGE #2
After those nine years as a college professor, SM left Spelman for the National Science Foundation, where she developed and ran a program to help minority-focused institutions improve their course offerings and research capacities.
CHANGE #3
Five years later, SM moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). In the view of a fellow academic, SM made her greatest mark on her field as the Dean of Student Affairs at MIT, where she confronted the challenge of bringing more students from under-represented minorities into science, technology, engineering, and math, both at her university and in higher education broadly.
While at MIT, SM promoted the idea that if Black students were more widely admitted to colleges and university STEM programs, they would have the advantage of the sort of informal networks – like study sessions and note swapping – that helped White students succeed. To study this idea more deeply, SM persuaded the Carnegie Corporation to research the issue, which led to the conclusion that improving Black enrollment required a wholesale rethinking of education from kindergarten through the 12th grade. “The present system of learning in mass education for a mass production model is inadequate to the demands the 21st century will place on this nation.”
CAREER SATISFACTION
Today, there are more Black women with doctorates in science and engineering with undergraduate degrees from Spelman than any other institution.
SM not only helped students get into graduate programs; she also mentored them once they arrived. She set up conferences, taught students and junior faculty how to apply for grants and invited them to sit on review panels.
“If she believed in you and saw you had a strong work ethic, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for you,” said a mathematician who was mentored by SM.
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This career story was based on an obituary written by Clay Risen, published by The New York Times on December 14, 2021.
