Marcia Peterson Sward (February 1, 1939 – September 21, 2008) was an American mathematician and nonprofit organization administrator. She is best known for serving as executive director of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), a position she held from 1989 until her retirement in 1999.
Early Life and Education
Sward was born Marcia Ruth Peterson in Maywood, Illinois, on February 1, 1939. She earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1961, followed by a master's degree in 1963 and a PhD in mathematics in 1967, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral thesis, written under the supervision of Edward J. Scott, was titled The Mixed Boundary Value Problem Along the Line of Parabolicity for a Certain Class of Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations.
Academic Career
After completing her PhD, Sward initially worked as a housemother at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., before receiving an appointment at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. She taught there from 1968 to 1980 and served as department head from 1979 to 1980.
Nonprofit and Administrative Career
Sward transitioned from academia to nonprofit administration in the early 1980s. She became the first Associate Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America, where she directed the organization's three journals and helped create its newsletter, MAA Focus, serving as its first editor.
In September 1985, she left the MAA to become the first executive director of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board of the United States National Research Council. She returned to the MAA in 1989 as executive director, succeeding Alfred B. Willcox. During her tenure, she helped establish several programs, including Project NExT, for which she secured funding from ExxonMobil, and worked with Ed Dubinsky to develop Special Interest Groups within the MAA. In 1992, she received the Citation for Public Service from the Council of the American Mathematical Society.
Later Career
After retiring from the MAA in 1999, Sward spent a year sailing in The Bahamas before returning to work. She joined the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation as senior director for education and environment, and in 2004 became Deputy Executive Director of the Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States. There, she led the Environmental Education department, helped establish the ANS Nature Preschool, and began the GreenKids program, an outreach initiative sending naturalists to Montgomery County, Maryland, schools. She also helped start the Loudoun Environmental Stewardship Alliance.
Death
Sward died in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2008.
Selected Publication
- Leading the Mathematical Sciences Department (2004), co-edited with Jon W. Scott and Tina H. Straley, published by the Mathematical Association of America.
