MET Legacy Series: The Rev. Stanley J. Bezuszka, S.J.

By Carol A. Edwards and Margaret (Peg) Kenney

NCTM's Mathematics Education Trust (MET) relies on contributions from Council members and other individuals, Affiliates, and corporations. Gifts to the Father Stanley J. Bezuszka Fund help support the  Professional Development Scholarship Emphasizing the History of Mathematics  for Grades 6-12 Teachers.

Father Stanley Bezuszka had a long and distinguished career in mathematics education, inspiring thousands of mathematics teachers in the United States and abroad. In fact, he had a great regard and enormous respect for teachers. In  Heart and Mind: A Classroom Odyssey , he wrote, "My life has been interwoven with those of teachers. They have been years of love for their friendship and especially years of admiration for their unselfish giving of themselves for their students."

Father Stan, as he came to be known, arrived in the United States from Poland when he was six months old. His family settled in the mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts, where he grew up speaking Polish at home while learning English in school. After finishing high school, Father Stan completed one year of college in Michigan and then returned to Massachusetts to enter the Jesuit order. It was not until then that he expressed an interest in mathematics and physics, prompted by encouragement from Father Eric O'Connor at Weston College and Father George O'Donnell at Boston College. Stan Bezuszka earned a bachelor's and two master's degrees at Weston College and Boston College prior to his ordination. Two years after ordination in 1946, he was accepted into a doctoral program in theoretical physics at Brown University. After receiving a PhD from Brown in 1953, he returned to Boston College to teach mathematics and physics and serve as chair of the mathematics department.

In 1957, Father Bezuszka founded the Boston College Mathematics Institute (BCMI) and served as its director. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was supportive of instructional programs that BCMI developed to improve teachers' mathematical content knowledge. Thus, Bezuszka led and taught in numerous NSF-sponsored institutes, both during the academic year and in the summer, which updated and strengthened the mathematics content knowledge of in-service teachers who attended Boston College from nearly every state in the union. According to a 1961 NCTM pamphlet, The Revolution in School Mathematics , the BCMI emphasized "the structure of mathematics approached from the historical point of view." When questioned about this in a June 2002 interview with David L. Roberts, a member of the NCTM Oral History Task Force, Father Bezuszka explained, "The historical viewpoint was to introduce briefly the people who wrote the mathematics being studied."

In a tribute to Father Stan Bezuszka offered by the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics in 2009 in Washington, D.C., Father Bezuszka's Boston College colleague Peg Kenney spoke about three traits that characterized his personality-energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity. All of these became evident to the mathematics education community beyond the bounds of Boston College starting in the late 1950s when Father Bezuszka became a tireless advocate for change in K-12 mathematics education. His popular presentations reflected his deep insight into content and the teaching and learning of mathematics and were invariably punctuated with humorous stories and anecdotes. As he traveled the country speaking at conferences, he always managed to visit classrooms and interacted with students of all ages. In fact, his presentations at meetings detailed some of his conversations with children.

When Father Bezuszka died on December 27, 2008, one month before his 95th birthday, he was Boston College's longest-serving faculty member, with more than 60 years of service. Father B., as he was often called, had given well over 1,000 presentations, workshops, and mini-courses in mathematics education at professional meetings in the United States and internationally. He had also published more than 100 works, including textbooks, monographs, articles, and research papers.

Father Bezuszka received numerous awards for his contributions to mathematics education, including the NCTM Mathematics Education Trust Lifetime Achievement Award for Teaching (1995) and the NCSM Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award in Mathematics Education (1990). He was also inducted into the Massachusetts Hall of Fame for Mathematics Educators as a founding member and was the first recipient of the Rev. Stanley J. Bezuszka, S.J. Lifetime Service Award for Mathematics Teaching and Learning from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England.

Father B. was well known for his basset hounds-first Rusty and then Freckles-which accompanied him on his daily walks around campus, and for his beautiful rose garden. In 2003, as a tribute to his long service as a teacher and priest, a group of his former students donated a bench to be placed in that garden. The inscription on the bench reads "Thanks, Father B." Those simple words also serve as a fitting tribute from scores of mathematics educators everywhere.

Recent Grant Recipient

Tiffani Grayer is the latest recipient of the Professional Development Scholarship Emphasizing the History of Mathematics. Tiffani is using grant funds to further her students' understanding of the history of mathematics. She writes, "I will introduce my geometry students to prominent mathematicians whose work continues to influence us today. In order for students to realize the importance of the mathematics they study, it helps to know that real individuals were the ones who theorized and proved many influential concepts in mathematics." Tiffani's students will read and discuss a series of biographies from the book  Mathematicians Are People, Too!  This study will allow students to investigate mathematics history in an interdisciplinary unit involving math, science, literacy, humanities, and fine arts.