David Moursund





Information About David Garvin Moursund '''

Education
Ph.D. (Mathematics, specializing in Numerical Analysis), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1963.

M.S. (Mathematics), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1960.

B.A. (Mathematics, minor in Physics), University of Oregon, 1958.

High School diploma, Eugene High School, 1954. (Tenth and eleventh grades at University High School; grades 7-9 at Roosevelt Junior High School; grades 1-6 at Condon Elementary School; all in Eugene, Oregon.)

Undergraduate University Honors
1958. Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Wisconsin Alumni Fellowship, and National Science Foundation Fellowship (each a three-year grant) for graduate studies. Accepted the NSF Fellowship scholarship and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for both master's degree and doctorate in mathematics.

1958. Distinguished ROTC (Military) Award.

1958. DeCou Prize for Outstanding Mathematics Major. University of Oregon.

1958. Elected to "Senior Six", University of Oregon Phi Beta Kappa. Graduated second in the 1958 class (based on GPA) at the University of Oregon.

1956. Crown Zellerbach Scholarship for junior and senior years, awarded to the most outstanding University of Oregon student who has completed two years of Chemistry.

1956. Outstanding Student in Freshman Physics, Freshman Chemistry, and Freshman Mathematics. University of Oregon Freshman book prizes (3 awards).

Professional Career
University Emeritus Professor, University of Oregon, 2005 to present.

Professor of Education, University of Oregon, 1982-2005.

Professor of Computer & Information Science, University of Oregon, 1976-1986.

Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Oregon, 1969-1976. (Department Chair, 1969-1975.)

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Oregon, 1967-1969.

Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and College of Engineering (Computer Center), Michigan State University, 1966-1967.

Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and College of Engineering (Computer Center), Michigan State University, 1963-66.

Instructor, Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, January, 1963-June, 1963.

Major professor or co-major professor of 82 doctoral students. The first three were at Michigan State University and all the rest were at the University of Oregon. See the names and dissertation titles at https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=8415.

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

Editor-in Chief of ISTE Publications and Executive Officer for Research and Development, International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), July, 1998 to March, 2001. Retired from ISTE March, 2001.

Editor-in-Chief of ISTE Publications and Executive Officer, ISTE, 1989-1998.

Editor-in-Chief of ICCE Publications and Chief Executive Officer, International Council for Computers in Education (ICCE), 1979-1989. (Name of professional organization changed to International Society for Technology in Education in 1989.)

Awards and Honors
2002. Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE).

2002. Member of the Advisory Committee for eTIP Cases, a three-year Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PTTT) Catalyst Grant.

2001. Top 25 Education Technology Advocates Award for District Administration: K-12 Education Leadership, Curriculum, Technology, & Trends.

1999. NECC Pioneer. I was one of 20 people selected as NECC Pioneers, with the presentation occurring at the 1999 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Atlantic City, NJ. The first NECC was held in Iowa in 1979, and I attended that small conference of perhaps 200 to 250 attendees. NECC was an outgrowth of the Computer Conference on the Undergraduate Curriculum, which was held for the previous 10 years under National Science Foundation sponsorship.

1999. Top 30 Most Significant People in Educational Technology selected by eSchool News. Accessed 12/3/01: http://www.att.com/learningnetwork/30_top.html. (Link did not work on 8/28/2016.)

1998. Paul Pair Award for Lifetime Achievement. Instructional Technology in Education, ISTE.

1998. "100 Most Influential" list selected by the editorial board of Homework Central. (http://www.homeworkcentral.com) Link did not work on 8/28/2016.)

1998. Making It Happen award. Also known as the "Pink Jacket" award, a corporate/media award given to leaders in the field of Instructional Technology in education.

1998. ISTE Staff Appreciation Award.

1990. Distinguished Alumni Award. University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences.

1988. President's Award. Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE).

1982. Recognition of Service Award. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for work as Chairman of Subcommittee on Elementary and Secondary Education, 1978-1982. Signed by David H. Brandin, President and Adele Goldberg, Secretary. I had started working with the ACM Subcommittee on Secondary Education several years earlier. At that time, there was no Subcommittee on Elementary Education. My work led to the expansion of the Secondary Education Committee into the Elementary and Secondary Committee, and I was its first chair.


 * During my time on the committee, I took a leadership role in putting together two reports titled ACM Topics: Computer Education for Elementary and Secondary Schools. The January, 1981, publication was 92 pages in length and the January, 1983issue was 111 pages in length.

1953. Won a one-month, all expenses paid, summer trip by bus from Eugene, Oregon, across Canada, to New York to visit the United Nations headquarters, to Washington D.C., and back to Eugene. This was an essay and speech contest sponsored by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows organization. Traveled with other high school sophomore and junior winners from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Grants and Contracts
Multiyear contract. Moursund founded the International Council for Computers in Education (ICCE) in 1979. In 1989 this professional society changed its name to International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Moursund headed this organization from its beginning until 2009, and continued employment with the organization until 2011. During most of this time he received 1/3 of his University of Oregon salary from the organization.

NSF grant: Teacher Professional Continuum: Strategic Integration of Science and Mathematics. $1.8 million from Fall 2005 to Summer 2010. Jill Baxter, PI; Dean Livelybrooks and David Moursund, co-PIs.

The UO College of Education was the recipient for a $48,000 equipment and training grant from the University of Oregon, May 2004 to June 2005. Moursund wrote the proposal and was co-PI for this grant funded from UO Educational Technology student fees.

The UO College of Education was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for a three-year Preparing Tomorrows Teachers to use Technology (PTTT) Implementation Grant from the US Department of Education, beginning June 2000. After a one-year extension, this project ended 31 May, 2004.

The UO College of Education was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for a one-year PTTT Capacity Building Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, beginning September, 1999.

ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for contracts to serve as the outside evaluator for three different three-year PTTT Implementation Grants beginning in September, 1999.

ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for an April, 1999, contract with the South Dakota Board of Regents to do on-site and document review of proposals by two SD Universities to create master's degree programs in the field of information technology in education.

Technology Innovation Challenge Grant, Phoenix Union High School in Arizona. ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for a five-year evaluation contract beginning September, 1998.

Energy Scheming FIPSE Grant. Moursund was the outside evaluator for a 1997-2000 project in the School of Architecture, University of Oregon.

ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for a Milken study of Colleges of Education. This one-year project that ended in Fall 1998 looked at IT in preservice education in the Schools, Colleges, and Departments of Education in the United States.

The Road Ahead. ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for this 1995-1998 research and evaluation project that involved activities at 22 school sites throughout the country. The project was funded by Bill Gates using royalties from his book, The Road Ahead.

Grant from National Foundation for Improvement of Education (NFIE). ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI. This work produced six single-topic booklets of about 20 pages each published by NFIE.

Intel Project. The Journey Inside: The Computer. ISTE was the recipient and Moursund was the PI for this $600,000 project that began in 1994 and ended in 1999. It developed materials to help students at grades 4-9 levels to learn about computer hardware. (A one-year extension of this project ended in 2000; it studied some of the project's impact on preservice teacher education.)

Moursund was PI for NSF Project TEI-8550588 Leadership Development for Computer-Integrated Instruction in Pre-College Education (15 September 1985 to 28 February 1989). The total amount of this three-year grant with a small extension grant was $344,200.

Moursund was a member of the Apple Education Foundation Board (1979-1984). The Apple Education Foundation was established in 1979 to support and develop new methods of learning through the use of small computers.

Moursund was the computer component director (1971-1976, with variable FTE, ranging up to .5) for a NSF Systemic Initiative in Math Education in Oregon. One of the outcomes was the initiation of a publication named the Oregon Computing Teacher. Over the years this became The Computing Teacher and then Learning and Leading with Technology—the flagship publication of ISTE.

Moursund was awarded NSF funding for designing and running NSF summer institutes for precollege teachers, 1966-1970. The first two were at Michigan State University and the subsequent ones were at the University of Oregon.

In 1965, Moursund received a small grant from the Mathematics Department at Michigan State University (funds came from the Ford Foundation) to conduct research on various methods for teaching freshman mathematics at MSU.

ICCE and ISTE
I established the journal, The Oregon Computing Teacher. It began publication in May, 1974. I founded the International Council for Computers in Education (ICCE) in 1979. At that time, "The Oregon Computing Teacher" underwent a name change to "The Computing Teacher" and became the flagship publication of ICCE. In 1995, The Computing Teacher became Learning and Leading with Technology. I served as the Editor-in-Chief of these journals from their inception until I retired from ISTE in 2001. In 1979, ICCE merged with IACE (International Association for Computers in Education) and became the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

During this time span, most issues of the journals contained an editorial or editor's message that I wrote. Occasionally, a guest editorial was substituted. To a large extent, my editorials focused on timely but ongoing topics. They identified a problem and provided ideas on possible solutions to the problem. The complete set ofDavid Moursund's editorials is available online as free PDF documents.

Information Age Education
In July, 2007, I created the non-profit organization, Information Age Education(IAE). Its goal is to help improve teaching and learning by people of all ages, throughout the world. By the end of 2015, its online publications have had more than 10 million hits. IAE has two major websites:


 * IAE-pedia. This is a collection of of about 300 documents.


 * IAE Blog, IAE Newsletters, Books, and Miscellaneous Articles. This websites is divided into three main parts:


 * * Click here to access the collection of over 350 IAE Blog entries.
 * * Click here to access the collection of over 190 IAE Newsletters. This free newsletter is published twice a month.
 * * Click here to access a list of 72 books that Moursund has authored, co-authored, and edited; 48 books are available free online.

Some Personal and Professional Background
I was born in Eugene, Oregon, on November 3, 1936. I was the second of four children born to Andrew F. and Lulu V. Moursund. My father and mother met while they were graduate students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Both my father and mother had some precollege teaching experience and then taught mathematics at the University of Oregon for many years. My father served as the head of the University of Oregon Mathematics Department for more than 30 years, beginning in 1939.

I grew up in a nice middle-class neighborhood located about a mile from the edge of the University of Oregon campus. Condon Elementary School and Roosevelt Junior High School were within easy walking distance. Several nearby neighbors were faculty at the UO, a couple were doctors, and a couple were precollege teachers.

The neighborhood area had once been a fruit orchard, and quite a few of the fruit trees were still there. There were nearby vacant lots that made for great places to play. There were quite a few kids in the neighborhood, so it was always easy to find a group to play with. Kick the can, hide and seek, kite flying, and sports were standard neighborhood outdoor activities.

Early on I displayed considerable talent in math, and my home environment strongly encouraged my progress in this area. By the time I was in the ninth grade, I had set my educational and vocational sights on becoming a math professor. After the ninth grade, I took one or more courses each summer at the University of Oregon until I graduated from high school and became a full time UO student. My undergraduate work was completed during 1954-1958 at the University of Oregon. At the time I graduated in June, 1958, the University of Oregon did not yet have a computer. I spent six months at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland via the ROTC program, but did not encounter any computer technology there. After I returned home, I visited Oregon State University and got a chance to play a little bit with their ALWAC computer. (See picture.) That was my first encounter with a computer. Quoting from the linked website:


 * Alwac III-E was a first generation computer (1950-1960) used in the academia and the military. These were characterized by the use of vacuum tubes as their switching technology. The most popular memory technique was the rotating drum, an electromechanical device, which was slow, but its reliability and low cost made it suitable for small-scale machines like IBM 650 and Alwac III-E. These machines became outdated because of the introduction of the transistor and the ferrite core memory in the late 1950's.

During Spring of 1959 I had my first formal teaching experience. I taught one of the many sections of Math 10 (a remedial course, roughly equivalent to first year high school algebra) in the Math Department at the University of Oregon. My students had the highest average on the uniform final exam used in all sections of the course.

When I arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the summer of 1959 to begin my graduate work, they were using an IBM 650 computer in their computer courses. I audited an IBM 650 assembler language programming course for the first half of the term, doing all of the assignments and taking the midterm exam. I think I made a perfect score on this midterm. The course seemed both interesting and relatively easy for me. However, I was carrying a full load of math courses and spending a lot of time with a newly acquired girlfriend, so did not continue in the course. That 1/2 of a course constitutes the totality of my formal coursework directly about computers during my entire undergraduate and graduate education.

Later, during my time at the University of Wisconsin, the university acquired Control Data Corporation hardware and FORTRAN, and I taught myself to program in FORTRAN. At the University of Wisconsin, I finished a doctorate in Mathematics in January, 1963 (specializing in Numerical Analysis, focusing on the use of computers to help solve math problems). The Math Department generously provided me a job as an Instructor until the end of the academic year.

I first became involved with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education in the summer of 1963, when I helped to teach some high school talented and gifted students about uses of computers in math. By that time, quite a few people had made computers available to precollege students. FORTRAN (developed during 1954-1957, and first made widely available on 15 April, 1957) was in wide use. With access to a key-punch machine, students could write and edit their programs and have them run on a nearby college or business computer.

I started my University career as an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University (MSU) in the fall of 1963. I held a joint appointment between the Math Department and the Computing Center in the College of Engineering. The BASIC programming language was still under development and not yet widely available. My recollection is that in 1965, while I was teaching at Michigan State University, I first gained access to the programming language BASIC. The MSU Computing Center had a Teletype terminal that accessed a computer in Chicago, and so I became acquainted with time-shared BASIC.

During my four years at Michigan State University, I did quite a lot of FORTRAN programming, developing programs that tied in with my research. I initiated a numerical analysis book-writing project with two of my colleagues, and used FORTRAN throughout the book. The book ended up with just two authors, as the third author became ill. Elementary Theory and Application of Numerical Analysis was published by McGraw-Hill in 1967.

While I was at MSU, I began to teach precollege teachers who were attending summer institutes. In the summer of 1965, I taught in an institute run by other faculty. In the summers of 1966 and 1967, I was the project director of the MSU National Science Foundation summer institutes. In each of these two summers, all of the participants took a FORTRAN programming course, a numerical analysis course, and an overview (review of) calculus course.

By the time I left MSU at the end of the summer of 1967, I was thoroughly hooked on being a teacher of teachers. I found this to be far more personally rewarding than the other courses I was teaching. Also, three of my students had completed their doctorates in Mathematics, and I had been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. When I began work as an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon (UO) in fall 1967, I was already focused on my ultimate career as a computer science educator and writer.

The remainder of my professional career was at the University of Oregon. In 1967-69, I was an Associate Professor with a joint appointment between the Mathematics Department and the Computing Center. In 1969, I became the first Chairman of the newly established Computer Science Department and served in that position for six years. While still affiliated with the UO Department of Mathematics, I was the major professor of three students who completed their doctorates in Mathematics. Thus, in total, I was the major professor of six students who completed doctorates in Mathematics.

During that time I established the second Master's degree program in the field of Computers in Education in the U.S. (Illinois Institute of Technology had the first). In 1971, I established the country's (the world's, I think) first doctoral program in Computers in Education. Under this new program, the UO College of Education admitted its first doctoral candidate in the field of Computers in Education in 1971. (He became the second of my students to complete this degree.) As this program grew, I was given a courtesy appointment (no money involved) in the College of Education to facilitate my being the major professor of these students.

I started a publication titled The Oregon Computing Teacher in 1973. This became The Computing Teacher when I established the International Council for Computers in Education in 1976, and later became Learning and Leading with Technology. (See more information in the ICCE and ISTE section above.)

My recollection is that I left the Computer Science Department and became a full time Professor in the College of Education in 1986. I remained there until my retirement in 2002, and continued working there one-third time until my "complete" retirement in 2007. While in the College of Education, I was major professor or co-major professor for 76 students who received their doctorates in the field of Computers in Education.

Since my retirement from the University of Oregon, I have continued my active involvement in the fields of math education, computers in education, and brain science. In 2007, I established Information Age Education (IAE) as a non-profit organization, and I publish extensively on the IAE websites.

Article about Moursund's Retirement from ISTE
ISTE honored me upon my retirement from ISTE in March, 2001. The following article is reprinted with permission from ISTE® (International Society for Technology in Education), © 2001, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.


 * Educational Technology Pioneer Retires from ISTE


 * (12 Jun 2001)


 * After more than thirty-five years of service and groundbreaking leadership in the field of educational technology, former ISTE Editor and Executive Officer, Dr. Dave Moursund has retired from ISTE. In the following article, past students and colleagues share their candid reflections on Dave's career, unique personality, and his vision for a revolution in education.


 * Revolutionary Vision


 * [[image:Moursund-dave.jpg|right]] Dr. Moursund has organized and run many IT-oriented training programs for teachers. This began with National Science Foundation programs run in the summers of 1966 and 1967 at Michigan State University. During 1966–67 he was the lead author of a book that integrated routine computer use into a mathematics course. His 1967 book, Elementary Theory and Application of Numerical Analysis (McGraw-Hill) is still in print through Dover. Dr. Moursund joined the University of Oregon faculty in 1967, with a joint appointment in the Computer Center and the Department of Mathematics. As the first Chair of the UO Computer Information and Science Department (1969–1975), Dr. Moursund helped to initiate the first Ph.D. degree program and second Master's degree program in the field of Computers in Education in the United States in 1971 and 1970, respectively.


 * “Dave had an incredible impact on our field, he was raising questions, important questions, before most anybody. He is certainly the one who influenced me the most,” says Dr. Neal Strudler, College of Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a past employee of ISTE and one of Dr. Moursund's former doctoral students.


 * Exceptional Scholar


 * Dr. Moursund received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1963. He has since authored or co-authored more than 60 books and several hundred articles in the field of computers in education. In addition to positions at the UO, other academic highlights include work as Assistant Professor (1963–66) and Associate Professor (1966–67) in the Department of Mathematics and College of Engineering (Computer Center) at Michigan State University.


 * “He's one of those that I would call an 'old-timer',” says Dr. Gary Bitter, ISTE's first elected president (1990–91). “Dave was one of the original people who had a great deal of understanding for the philosophy of the role of technology in computer education and a talent for getting people together to support the movement. He's been a truly great friend and colleague. I certainly admire and respect all that he's done.”


 * Powerful Leader


 * Dr. Moursund founded the International Council for Computers in Education (ICCE) in 1979 and served as executive officer of the organization from 1979 to 1989. During his time with ICCE, [Correction inserted 8/29/07. The first five words of the previous sentence should be: Prior to starting ICCE] he started the publication The Oregon Computing Teacher that later became The Computing Teacher, predecessor of the current Learning & Leading with Technology. After ICCE merged with IACE, the International Association for Computing in Education, to become the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in 1989, he served as executive officer of ISTE from 1989–98.


 * David Brittain, Partner, MGT of America, Inc., and an ISTE past president, highlights Dr. Moursund's leadership contributions and especially appreciates all that Dr. Moursund has done for ISTE: “It is with mixed feelings that I learned that Dave Moursund is retiring. Very few if any members of our educational technology industry have had the impact on teaching and learning that Dave has had. Dave's vision for the use of technology in education, which he has shared through his publications and presentations, has enabled many of us to see better ways of helping teachers become more comfortable and proficient with technology. He is one of those few individuals about whom it can be truthfully said that he has made a significant difference in the lives of teachers and students across the country.”


 * Lasting Legacy


 * Dr. Bonnie Marks, ISTE past president and Director of Technology for the San Francisco Bay Area Region of the California Technology Assistance Project, shares her reflections: “Few people have influenced the field of educational technology more than Dave Moursund. His leadership in ISTE and its predecessor, ICCE, has touched tens of thousands of educators. In his work with the University of Oregon he mentored doctoral students who have gone on to leadership positions in school technology throughout the nation.” Dr. Moursund has served on the dissertation committees of more than 75 doctoral students.


 * Current Projects


 * "Retiring from ISTE has allowed me to increase my commitment to the Teacher Education program at the University of Oregon," said Dr. Moursund. He is now working full time in a combination of teaching, consulting, writing, and PT3 (Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to use Technology) grant activities.


 * For more information about Dr. Moursund's current projects, visit his website, http://iae-pedia.org/Main_Page.

Responses to Reader-posed Questions
Q. Why do you write books and make them available free under a Creative Commons License?

A. There are two parts to this answer. First, I don't like the hassle of dealing with commercial publishers, such as writing to meet their perceived needs. Second, I believe that writing free books is a way to help contribute to the world and to help pay back for all of the good things that the world has done for me. I have a very nice retirement from the University of Oregon and I don't need book royalty income to support my life style. It gives me considerable satisfaction to be able to write what I want to write and to share my writing freely with the world.

'''Q. You write a lot. Do you enjoy doing this?'''

A. Writing gives me considerable pleasure. The writing process requires that I read a great deal, communicate with many people, and think a lot. The publication process is quite similar to teaching—except that I don't have to grade papers and assign grades to students. Thus, I can continue to be a teacher and not have to do the one part of teaching that I don't like doing.

'''Q. I understand that you have "face blindness." How has this affected you?'''

A. Face blindness is a layman's term for prosopagnosia. About two-percent of people suffer from this problem. In essence, it means they have great difficulty in recognizing people by their faces.

For myself, I was not aware of this problem until I read a 7/17/2006 Time magazine article. It then became apparent why I often couldn't pick out a friend's face in a crowd and explained some difficulties I had in working with students and colleagues, even in small groups. Of course, I can recognize many of the people I know well from their voices, mannerisms, clothing, context, and so on.

Nowadays I am able to be open about this problem, so people often help me when I don't seem to recognize who they are. Of course, I also suffer from two problem that many older people encounter—not being able to quickly remember names of people that I do know, and becoming more "creaky." A double whammy. Ces't la vie.

(Readers: Feel free to submit questions. Questions should be sent to moursund@uoregon.edu.)

My Father Andrew Moursund and my Friend Gene Maier
On 3/8/2018 I was going through some of my old archives, and came across a document written by my friend Gene Maier. It was about my father Andrew Moursund and Gene's interactions with him. I have included Gene's document her for two reasons. First, it provided some insights into my father, and thus into a strong force in my upbringing. Second, it includes the time span when the State of Oregon received a five-year multi-million dollar National Science foundation grant for a statewide K-12 math education project.

My father played the leadership role in writing the proposal, and Gene Maier served as Director of the project. I had already had many years of NSF funding to do teacher education projects, and so I was put in charge of the computers-in-education component of the project. My recollection is that I was .33 FTE on this grant for six years.

The computers-in-education component of the project did a number of teacher education activities. In addition, it funded my work in starting a publication named Oregon Computing Teacher in 1973. (See the next paragraph.) When the grant ended, the Math Learning Center was created as a 501(c)(3) non-profit to continue some of the project work. Gene Maier was President of the Board of this corporation, and I was a founding member of its Board of Directors. As of 3/8/2018 I am still on the Board of Directors.

My publication, Oregon Computing Teacher, became the flagship publication of the Oregon Council for Computers in Education. In 1969 the name was changed to The Computing Teacher and I established the 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, the International Council for Teachers in Education. So, from a historical point of view, the work of my father Andrew Moursund and my friend Gene Maier led to the establishment of the International Council of Teachers in Education—which is now the International society for Technology in Education.

Gene Maier's Recollections of Andrew Moursund


 * I began my freshman year at the University of Oregon in the fall 1946. Fresh out of high school, I had enrolled in the School of Architecture. However, a few weeks into my freshman design class, I decided I had the talent to be a structural engineer, but I questioned by design capabilities and decided to switch majors to mathematics, a subject I enjoyed and which throughout high school and so far in my college algebra class, presented no difficulties. So I went to the math department office to inform them of my decision and get assigned an advisor in my newly chosen field of study. The math department chair, a rather portly fellow, looked at me through the bottoms of his bifocals and asked me, rather brusquely, why I thought I could be a math major. I told him I was averaging very close to 100 in my college algebra quizzes and he asked me if I had had the course before, and I admitted that I had much of the material in high school. With no additional comment he signed the required form, naming himself as my academic advisor. And thus began an association with Andrew Moursund that spanned more than a quarter of a century.


 * I had my first two terms of sophomore calculus from Andrew. I don’t know if I excelled in my understanding of calculus, but I did excel at test-taking. On one of Andrew’s test, I scored in the 90’s, when the class average was something like 48. From that time on, it seemed as the saying goes, that Andrew took me under his wing.


 * I also had Andrew in advanced calculus in my senior year and real analysis as a first year graduate student. In our advanced calculus class, 60 billion became known as Moursund’s Constant. In any discussion about what happened to a function as the variable approached infinity, Andrew might ask us what happened to the function for various values of the variable, more often than not, culminating the discussion by asking us what happened when the variable was 60 billion. One might say, for all practical purposes, that Moursund’s Constant is the upper limit of all arbitrarily large numbers. I also remember the day in advanced calculus when Andrew was lecturing to us, thumbs hooked in his pockets, head tilted back, scanning the class through the bottoms of his bifocals, when he interrupted whatever mathematical point he was making and blurted out, “Ashford, you’re pants are unzipped,” much to the embarrassment of Tom Ashford—who turned a deep shade of red—and the tittering disquietude of the rest of us.


 * It was characteristic of Andrew to speak his mind. I, and my fellow students collected Andrew’s more piquant observations.  We called them Moursundities. Besides the one mentioned in the previous paragraph, I remember others. My favorite involves George Swift, a fellow math major who also had Andrew for an advisor. During registration period one term, I went to Andrew’s office to get his signature on my proposed schedule. George, who had the appointment before me, was still there. He had a speech class listed on his schedule and Andrew asked him why he wanted to take a speech class. George began an eloquent explanation of why he should. Andrew listened awhile before interrupting him. “You don’t need a speech class,” he said, “you’re glib enough already.” Then there was the time, a few years later, when I and a couple of other graduate students who were married, or about to be married, were talking in the hall when Andrew walked up to us and began telling us why graduate students shouldn’t get married. Just then Ken Ghent walked by prompting Andrew to qualify his remarks, in a voice that I’m sure was loud enough for Ken to hear, by stipulating. “Unless you marry money, like Ken did.” (Ken, who joined the math faculty in 1935, had married into a well-to-do Eugene lumber family.)


 * I received my B.A, degree in 1950 and was offered a graduate assistantship, enabling me to complete a M.A. the following year. For my Ph.D studies, I had wanted to go the University of Washington to stay close to home and the love of my life, who was an undergraduate at Oregon, but at the urging of Will Dixon, who was a Princeton Ph.D, and professor in a couple of statistics courses I took, I applied and received an assistantship at Princeton. So I headed off for the East Coast where I spent a mathematically-rich but love-sick year. I inquired of Andrew about the possibility of returning to Oregon and he made a graduate assistantship available to me. So I returned to Oregon, got married and spent the next two years completing my Ph.D. during the first year of which my wife completed her bachelor’s degree.


 * After a brief foray into the lumber business, I joined the faculty of Pacific Lutheran University—at that time College—in 1955. My family and I frequently came to Eugene to visit friends and relatives and I would drop in at the math department. On one of these occasions, probably in 1960, Andrew broached the subject of my taking a position at Oregon to help administer the lower-division program. By this time I was an Associate Professor and chair of the math department at PLU, but the thought of returning to Oregon was compelling. I was reluctant, however, to make the change because I had been doing no research and was afraid that would preclude my chance of any advancement at Oregon. Andrew assured me that my promotion and tenure would be dependent on factors other than research. He put this in writing in a letter in which he offered an Associate Professorship with tenure, as I recall. at a salary that was 50% more than I was earning at PLU. I accepted and thus in 1961 I became an Associate Professor at Oregon with a nil publication record. We moved to Eugene and I began teaching in Fall Term. Near the end of September, Andrew walked into my office and gave me a form to fill out, telling me I needed to do that so he could pay me. It was a job application form.


 * A few years later Andrew walked into my office and told me I had been promoted to Professor—the stipulation in the letter had been honored. (After I joined the Oregon faculty, I did publish a few mathematical papers, but I never got deeply involved in research.)


 * I wasn’t at Oregon long before my role changed. I did oversee the freshman math sequence for a couple of years, but then my responsibilities shifted to the math program for secondary teachers. Coincidentally with my joining the faculty, the department had developed special courses for preservice secondary teachers and the National Science Foundation began funding mathematics institutes for inservice teachers. Andrew championed both these movements. With the aid of supporters like Ivan Niven and Ken Ghent, Andrew saw to it that the program for teachers became an established and valued focus of the department. He also was instrumental in obtaining NSF grants to conduct summer, inservice and academic year institutes. He involved me in both of these areas. I was assigned one of the courses for prospective teachers, designated as the advisor of all math majors who wanted to become teachers and was named as the departmental representative to the University Teacher Education Committee. Andrew gave me a lot of latitude in carrying out my responsibilities. On occasion, I would assist one of my advises in preparing a petition to meet a requirement in some alternative manner that required the signature of the department chair.  Andrew never countermanded a deal I worked out with a student. He would always sign whatever needed to be signed; later he might tell me that I was too soft hearted or express his reservations about my judgment, but as far as the student was concerned, he always backed my decisions. I always appreciated that about Andrew; if he gave me an assignment, he let me carry it out as best as I saw fit. And in other matters related to my role, he gave me lots of autonomy. A case in point are the deals I made with graduate students in the College of Education. From time to time, the College would send a graduate student to see me who wanted to learn more mathematics, and at the same time earn credits towards their degree. For most of these students there was no course in mathematics carrying graduate credit that they were prepared to take. So I would sign them up for a graduate level reading and conference course with me, then I would identify a course at the appropriate level and get the consent of the instructor to have my student attend their class as if they were a regularly enrolled student and report their grade to me. (I recall two elementary education doctoral students who took calculus this way.) Andrew never questioned any of these arrangements and may, indeed, have suggested the procedure—I don’t recall its origins. A later departmental chair wanted to approve all such arrangements; I told him I didn’t think he really wanted to do so and agreed to report any arrangement I made, which I did a couple of times and then forgot about it.


 * As far as the NSF institutes were concerned, Andrew and I had a good working relationship.  Andrew prepared the proposals, arranged for the institute faculties and took care of all the budgetary matters.  I did the initially screening of the applicants, served as the academic advisor of the participants, taught in the institutes, and arranged for the written and oral master’s exams that most participants eventually took.  Normally, on each grant proposal, Andrew was listed as Director and I as Associate Director.


 * Andrew was responsible for the establishing of the Oregon NSF Systems Project, partially through the role he played in making Oregon a hotbed of NSF institutes but more directly through his impatience with ineptness. NSF held frequent directors’ meetings in Washington D.C., Sometimes Andrew would go, sometimes he would send me, and on some occasions, when we had multiple grants, we both would go. In one of these latter instances, when the morning session proved to be especially tiresome and the proposed afternoon session didn’t look anymore promising, Andrew suggested we skip it and instead visit the office of the Academic Year Institutes, which had been rumored to have some new things in the offing. When we reached the office and Andrew explained our purpose, we were ushered into Mike Frodyma’s office. Mike headed the AYI program and Andrew knew him from his years of involvement in AYI institutes. Mike described the new “comprehensive” and “systems” programs his office was undertaking. They had funded an experimental systems project in Delaware and were seeking other sites for further experimentation and the conversation turned to whether Oregon might be such a site. Mike thought that a possibility because of the large number of NSF institute programs in the state as well as the cooperative spirit among the state’s math educators. After a bit, Mike yelled into the adjoining room, “Ted, come here,” and shortly, Ted Reid, who was heading up the “systems” experiment, walked into the room. When Andrew and I indicted our receptiveness to the notion of an Oregon systems project, Mike suggested that Ted visit Oregon to assess the suitability of undertaking a statewide system’s project. Andrew and I returned to Oregon and we agreed that I should contact Don Rasmussen, who was the state math specialist, and enlist his aid in arranging a itinerary for Ted’s visit. Ted came and OSME (the Oregon System in Mathematics Education) was conceived.  Andrew didn’t take an active role in the development of OSME, but he freed me up from many of my Departmental duties so I could. Had he not instigated that visit to the AYI office and grasped the intentions of those in charge, it is unlikely that OSME would have happened.


 * Becoming a faculty member, gave me the opportunity to expand my collection of Moursundities. I remember being in the departmental office when a student athlete came in bearing some kind of petition that required the department head’s signature, perhaps a request for a late course withdrawal. Andrew asked the student what led to the petition and the student replied that his coach had suggested it. While signing the form, Andrew declared, “We ought to throw the coach in the mill race.” It wasn’t only students that were the recipients of Andrew’s pronouncements. I was in Andrew’s office one day when the Dean called to report a decision on some matter and heard Andrew very clearly describe his opinion of it. Secretly I thought that someone who had survived 30 years as a department chair had the right to tell a dean whatever he wanted. Another example of Andrew’s directness occurred in a departmental meeting when a faculty member made a motion that Andrew thought was frivolous. He looked at the faculty member and calling him by name announced, “That’s the goddamdest motion I ever heard, and furthermore, if it passes I won’t live by it anyway.” The matter was dropped.


 * When he was about to retire as department chair after holding the post 31 years, he again ventured into my small office in the southeast corner of the Deady Hall basement. This time he had a request. The space on the main floor of Deady that once housed the departmental office was available. It consisted of a large outer office and a small inner office that had once been Andrew’s office. He wanted to move back to that office when he retired and wanted to know if I would move into the outer office. He thought we would be compatible office mates. I agreed and made the move. The arrangement was short-lived; Andrew died soon after he retired.


 * And so, my quarter-century relationship with Andrew ended. He had been my mentor, colleague and friend. Through the opportunities he created for me, the assignments he gave me, and the autonomy he granted me, Andrew, more than any other person, shaped my professional career.