The Sol Garfunkel Award

About the Sol Garfunkel Award

The Sol Garfunkel award is given to individuals who embody Sol’s visionary and executive skills in bringing about significant improvement in mathematics education. Such improvement can come in a variety of ways. As COMAP’s Founder and Executive Director, Sol was always thinking critically and engaged in wide-ranging conversations regarding what became the mission of COMAP; he was prepared to leverage opportunities and connect the best people in service of manifesting his ideas. We are grateful to the recipient for supporting the work and mission of COMAP in vital ways.

About Sol Garfunkel

Solomon (Sol) Garfunkel is the founding director of COMAP and he served on the mathematics faculties of Cornell University and the University of Connecticut at Storrs but has dedicated the last 40 years to research and development efforts in mathematics education. He was project director for the Undergraduate Mathematics and Its Applications (UMAP) and the High School Mathematics and Its Applications (HiMAP) Projects funded by NSF, and directed three telecourse projects, including Against All Odds: Inside Statistics and In Simplest Terms: College Algebra, for the Annenberg/CPB Project. He has been Executive Director of COMAP, Inc. since its inception in 1980.

Dr. Garfunkel was the project director and host for the video series For All Practical Purposes: Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics. He was the Co-Principal Investigator on the ARISE Project, and Co-Principal Investigator of the CourseMap, ResourceMap, and WorkMap projects. In 2003, Dr. Garfunkel was Chair of the National Academy of Sciences and Mathematical Sciences Education Board Committee on the Preparation of High School Teachers. He was the recipient of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics Glenn Gilbert Award. He served on the Mathematics Expert Group for PISA 2012.

Sol Garfunkel awardees:

2024 Wade Ellis Jr.
2024 Joseph Malkevitch
2023 Henry Pollak

The Doug Faires Award

About the Doug Faires Lifetime Achievement Award

In memory of Doug Faires, a gifted teacher and mathematics educator, the purpose of the Doug Faires Lifetime Achievement award is to recognize individuals for their many years of service or who in one special year made outstanding contributions to mathematics education in the spirit of Doug. Doug was a master at getting the best out of those around him, encouraging them to recognize their own potential, and mentoring them to achievements far beyond their expectations. The recipient is acknowledged as emulating Doug, who as a dedicated teacher believed in the power of mathematical modeling to motivate students at all levels and to lead them on a path to life-long learning.

About Doug Faires

Doug graduated from Sharpsville High School in Pennsylvania, class of 1959. He pursued an undergraduate degree at Youngstown State University, graduating in 1963, and left YSU to complete a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of South Carolina before returning to YSU as a faculty member in 1969. He has been associated with Youngstown State University ever since, retiring as professor of mathematics in 2006.

During his tenure at YSU, Doug was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Outstanding College–University Teacher of Mathematics by the Ohio Section of the Mathematical Association of America and five Distinguished Faculty awards from Youngstown State University, which also awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Science in 2006. For nearly two decades, he was a member of the council of Pi Mu Epsilon National Mathematics Honorary Society, including a term as president. In addition, he was awarded the MacDuffee Award by Pi Mu Epsilon for lifetime service in 2005. Doug was a Co-Director of examinations for the American Mathematics Competitions for 8 years and has been a long-term judge for the COMAP Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). He authored or co-authored more than 20 books, including 10 editions of the classic Numerical Analysis (Cengage Learning, 2015).

Dr. Faires, as he was known to his students, will be remembered not for his awards, but as a dedicated teacher. He was a master at getting the best out of those around him, encouraging them to recognize their own potential, and mentoring them to achievements far beyond their expectations. A tireless champion of undergraduate research in mathematics, Doug was a driving force behind the establishment in 2006 of the Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics at Youngstown State. Doug served first as a Faculty Advisor for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). He gave talks to local high schools, inviting them to form modeling teams to compete in the HiMCM (COMAP’s high school modeling contest). He recruited and mentored high school faculty advisors and invited the advisors and their teams to Youngstown State where the teams met one another, and the experienced members of the college teams mentored the high school students. Long-term bonds were formed, and each year college and high school teams were encouraged to participate in the modeling contests. Additionally, teams were given feedback by Doug and others after the contest was over. Later, Doug served as a Final Judge for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, where he again was a true leader.

Since 2023, this award has been presented at the Joint Mathematics Meetings.

Doug Faires awardees:

2024 Veena Mendiratta
2023 Solomon Garfunkel
2022 Kathi Snook
2021 Frank R Giordano
2019 Chris Arney
2018 Anne Dougherty
2017 Xiaofeng Gao
2017 Daniel Teague
2016 Rick Spellerberg
2016 Marie Vanisko