Session Chair: Donald F. St. Mary, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Keynote Speaker: Raymond L. Johnson is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. Professor Johnson earned his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas (1963) and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Rice University (1970). From 1991 to 1996 he was Chair of the Mathematics Department at the University of Maryland. His areas of research are functional analysis and differential equations.
Professor Johnson actively recruits African-American students into the graduate mathematics program. His initiatives have resulted in UMD being second only to Howard University in the production of African-American Ph.Ds. He has personally mentored 23 students who have received Ph.D. degrees in mathematics, of which 22 are African Americans. Of the 22 African Americans, eight are females. Professor Johnson has been influential at the national level in fostering greater opportunities for African-American students to earn Ph.D.s in mathematics, as part of two National Science Foundation supported mathematical institutes at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota and with the Mathematical Association of America.
Professor Johnson was awarded the 2006 Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A tribute to his contributions is posted at the site Mathematicians of the African Diaspora.
A biographical sketch, MSN Hero, was published in Science 2002, Minority Scientists Network.

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At the symposium, we will be privileged to hear him offer:

"The Maryland Experience: Building a community of African-American graduate students"

Abstract

I will describe the process that led to the recruitment and graduation of a significant number of African American mathematics students at the University of Maryland and give my view of the essential elements for such a program. Our successes came after a number of failures, which formed the basis of our later success.

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