STaR Donor Spotlight: Bob and Barbara Reys
Learn how to support the STaR program.
Each year, the AMTE STaR Program brings together several dozen early-career mathematics teacher educators from across the United States so that they can learn from leaders in the field and they can start to form important and long-lasting professional relationships with each other. This outcome is not accidental, but is at the very heart of the origins of the STaR Program. And no one knows this better than the two people who first imagined the program, brought it to fruition, and led the program in its initial years—Bob and Barbara Reys.
When Bob graduated with his mathematics education doctorate in 1966, he felt somewhat isolated. “I was in a small program,” Bob explains, “And I really didn’t know very many people in the profession.” It took some time for Bob to find the opportunities to meet and work with other mathematics teacher educators—especially those from other institutions. Once those connections were made, though, it was clear that rich and meaningful collaborations with others was important for the field to move forward.
As Bob and Barbara worked with graduate students at the University of Missouri through various research projects and centers, they saw how the graduate students excelled when they got to work with others. They began to think about ways that they could enable graduate students to meet people from other programs and to begin their professional collaborations. In 2009, they had a conversation with Spud Bradley at the National Science Foundation about their idea to bring together early-career faculty to jump start their professional connections with each other, and Spud told them that NSF might be interested—but only in providing some initial funding for a program like this. STaR was funded and launched with its first cohort of 44 Fellows in the summer of 2010.
Barbara points out that this initial funding was critical, but there was always an understanding that the program would need to sustain itself after about five years. “This is where AMTE was critical,” she says. “Without the support of AMTE and its leadership, the STaR Program would not have been able to continue.” Today, STaR Fellows get about half of their support from their home institutions. The other half comes from donations to the STaR Program—financial support from individuals, AMTE Affiliates, businesses and corporations like College Preparatory Mathematics (CPM), and previous STaR cohorts. Even in their retirement, Bob and Barbara are annual donors to the program—continuing their commitment to a cause they shepherded to reality over twelve years ago.
As Bob states, “Typically, early-career faculty normally need about ten years to make connections with peers at other institutions. Anything we can do to help make those connections earlier, helps them and all of mathematics education.”