David Geary receives 2009 UM Jefferson Award

David C. Geary, Curators Professor of Psychological Sciences, has been honored with the 2009 Thomas Jefferson Award. The award, funded through a grant from the Robert Earl McConnell Foundation, honors a member of the University of Missouri community who "through personal influence and performance of duty in teaching, writing and scholarship, character and influence, devotion and loyalty to the university best exemplifies the principles and ideals of Thomas Jefferson."

"I am grateful to the university for this award," says Geary. "It is nice to be recognized."

The nomination packet for this award was compiled by Dave McDonald, professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences. It includes a letter summarizing Geary's contributions in teaching, research, writing, creative activities and service to the University of Missouri and humankind. Letters of support from students, colleagues, alumni and external referees are included as well as an up-to-date curriculum. The Thomas Jefferson award is given in odd-numbered years.

Geary is a cognitive developmental psychologist with interests in mathematical learning and evolution.

"In mathematics, and to a lesser degree, science, high school seniors graduate with a math competency toward the bottom of the industrial ladder," says Geary. "The longer the students are in the U.S. education system, the worse they compare relative to other industrial countries."

Geary explains this has been a problem for a long time; however, the United States had been able to import well-trained mathematicians and scientists from other countries including China, India and Eastern Europe. Now that those countries' economies are improving, those people are choosing to stay home rather than come to the United States.

"We are in a situation where we are potentially at a disadvantage because we are not producing enough well-educated individuals in science and math," says Geary. "The only way to fix it is to educate our own."

Similar to Thomas Jefferson's ideal that "the application of knowledge is the solution to public problems," Geary's research is targeted toward finding out how students learn­ what works and what doesn't. If this information is found out early in a student's education, preparations can be made for success instead of failure and will maintain America's place on the forefront of technology.

Geary served on the President's National Mathematics Panel and was appointed by President Bush to the National Board of Directors for the Institute for Education Sciences. Geary chaired the learning and cognition task-group for the mathematics panel and oversaw the review and integration of learning from preschool through high-school algebra, as well as implications of emerging brain imaging research. As a member of the national board, Geary contributes to the oversight of the $1 billion/year budget of the Institute of Education Sciences; the charge of the institute is to give educational research a scientific basis.

In 2002, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funded the MU Math Study directed by Geary. The study is currently following 250 kids to identify the mechanisms that contribute to mathematical learning through algebra and the mechanisms that underlie learning disabilities in mathematics. Geary is collaborating with colleagues at Vanderbilt and Stanford Universities on related brain-imaging and intervention projects.

Geary received his doctorate from the University of California, Riverside and has held faculty positions at the University of Texas at El Paso and at Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly University of Missouri­Rolla) before coming to Columbia 20 years ago. He has published more than 175 articles and chapters across a wide range of topics, including cognitive and developmental psychology, education, evolutionary biology and medicine. He has written three books: Children's Mathematical Development; Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, which will be out in its second edition in fall 2009; and Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence. He also co-wrote Sex Differences: Summarizing More than a Century of Scientific Research.

by Laura Lindsey
College of Arts and Science

Links

David Geary
MU Math Study
Department of Psychological Sciences

UM Thomas Jefferson Award