It all adds up: Martha Anne McKnight creates the Ancel Clyde Mewborn Professorship in Mathematics
Ah…the stress-reducing properties of calculus. Yes, for a select few, rational numbers in fixed rows and columns can be very soothing—especially when you’re working 18-hour days on tours of duty in England, Bosnia and the Persian Gulf. Or when put in harm’s way. With a pencil and a piece of paper, military psychiatrist Martha Anne McKnight transported herself from the harsh realities of global conflict back to a simpler, more peaceful time, to a Carolina mathematics professor whose support encouraged her excellence; whose advice furthered her achievement; and whose courses taught her that within chaos, reliable order can be found.
Ancel Mewborn (Photo by Steve Exum)
“It was more than home I recalled during these
times,” McKnight, a 1977 Carolina graduate, said of
her military service. “One of the things that helped
me greatly during these hours … was my far
less-than-perfect ability to recall matrix theory and
calculus as Dr. Mewborn had so impressively taught.”
In honor of Professor Emeritus Ancel Mewborn and his
significant contributions to her life, McKnight has
established the Ancel Clyde Mewborn Professorship in
Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences with a
$333,000 bequest. When added to a $167,000 match from the
state’s Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust
Fund, this $500,000 professorship will ensure that
generations of Carolina students—including soldiers
on the GI bill—will continue to benefit from
Mewborn’s legacy as a brilliant teacher and warm,
caring adviser. “My memories of his well-taught
classes and his unmatched devotion to his students occurred
over many continents,” McKnight said. “They
kept my morale higher and my ability to practice medicine
intact during quite desperate times.”
McKnight frequently rewrote her will: Soldiers sent
overseas are required to do so at each departure. But when
her 52-year-old brother, the Honorable Brent
McKnight—a Morehead and Rhodes scholar, graduate of
Carolina’s School of Law and federal judge—died
prematurely after a five-month battle with cancer, she
reconsidered the allocation of her assets.
Martha Anne McKnight (Photo by Steve Exum)
“After all you say, you want to do what you
mean,” McKnight, now a civilian, said. “[The
professorship] is quite simply a small way of expressing my
gratitude to Professor Emeritus Mewborn and to the
Department of Mathematics for his excellent teaching, his
generosity and kindness and—most
importantly—for the manner in which he has conducted
his own life as an example worthy of repetition.”
McKnight met Mewborn while asking his advice on an
introductory calculus course. It was the start of a
relationship that sustained McKnight throughout her double
major in mathematics and chemistry. Mewborn’s open
door welcomed her regardless of office hours, he supported
her pursuit of mathematics despite commonly held biases
against women in the field, and he set a standard of ethics
McKnight hopes to endow.
Among all the students taught in his 30 years, Mewborn
remembered McKnight and the congenial professor-student
friendship they developed. “She was very bright, very
outgoing,” he said. “I taught her in at least
three classes and she came to my office a number of times
for advice, both formally and informally. She was highly
motivated, and I knew she was headed to medical
school.”
Mewborn valued his contact with students like McKnight
above all else. A popular teacher, he received a Tanner
Award for excellence in teaching and a number of
departmental teaching awards from graduate students. It was
his effort to treat each student as an individual—and
not just a member of a class—that endeared him to
McKnight and others.
“Teachers don’t teach as much as they think
they do,” he said. “Teachers guide students as
they learn, and students learn through their efforts and an
interest in what they’re doing. The teacher has to
arouse an interest in learning, show that he or she is
interested in the student and make it clear that learning
this subject is worthwhile.”
McKnight surprised Mewborn with the professorship at a
dinner in his honor. With characteristic humility, he
sidesteps the limelight. “It was such a nice
thing—a good thing—for her to do for the
department,” he said. Patrick Eberlein, chair of the
Department of Mathematics, is more ebullient. “It was
one of the finest moments in the life of the mathematics
department that I have witnessed in my 33 years at
Carolina,” he said. “The Mewborn professorship
reminds us of the importance of undergraduate teaching. An
outstanding teacher can remain fresh in the memory of a
student for a lifetime, and it clearly did so for Dr.
McKnight.”
In her remarks at the dinner, McKnight quoted Carl Jung:
“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant
teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human
feelings.” Through her generosity, students will
continue to be touched by the career of Ancel Mewborn.
Chrys Bullard