Wake Forest Magazine, June 2009 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

encouragement and inspiration,” says Baxley,
who retired in 2004. “He was unflagging in
his dedication to his students and to his research.
I always knew he was a good teacher,
and I got to hear it firsthand from my son,
Paul (’91), when he was in one of Fred’s
classes. I saw it for myself when he was kind
enough to let me make up the deficiency of
never having a number theory course by attending
his class one semester.”
Tammy Pausch Mason (’81) took every
math course Howard taught during her four
years as an undergraduate and credits him
with her decision to major in math and pursue
a career in education. “He was a gifted
and caring teacher, who knew his stuff and
knew how to convey understanding of each
concept to his students,” says Mason, who is
now an instructional technology specialist
with the Lynchburg City Schools in Lynchburg,
Virginia. “I would often go talk with him
about my classes or other issues, and he would
always listen with great care and provide
meaningful feedback.”
Mark Ginn (’88, MA ’90), chair and associate
professor of mathematics at Appalachian
State University, had Howard for several
classes as an undergraduate and a graduate
student. “I was heavily influenced by him,”
Ginn says. “He was a definite role model in his
professionalism. He had a real knack of giving
students just enough help, but not too much,
so that you could learn to solve problems on
your own.”
Howard’s soft-spoken, mild-mannered,
professorial nature belies a dry sense of humor,
often played out anonymously over the years
in the math department offices. There was
the time in the early ’90s during an arduous
search for a new faculty member when the
search committee received a phenomenal
application from one “I.M.A. Plushbottom”
who held the BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, MD,
and Ph.D. from “PU.” It was accompanied
by a recommendation letter from his thesis
adviser, who allowed that Plushbottom was a
terrible teacher—who would fit in perfectly at
Wake Forest. The letters—and a photograph
of Plushbottom that bore an uncanny resemblance
to Howard—broke the tension of
the search.
Then there was the time in the early 1980s
when esteemed biology professor Charles
Allen ('39, MA '41), heading up a committee
on space allocations, recommended that
the math department move to Wingate Hall,
because its space requirements were “Spartan.”
Soon a sign appeared in the math department
office welcoming visitors to “Sparta.” The
sign also had arrows pointing toward Tribble
Hall—“Athens, x meters”; Wait Chapel— “Jerusalem,
y meters”; and down to the lower
floors where the Babcock Graduate School
of Management then had its offices—“Hades,
z meters.” Howard never admitted responsibility,
but it bore all the traits of his calm
demeanor and sense of humor.
Howard was the graduate student adviser
for thirty years and oversaw the thesis
research of more than twenty graduate
students. His own research interests lie in
number theory, combinatorial analysis, and
Fibonacci numbers. He is a past president of
the Fibonacci Association, an international
mathematics organization devoted to the
study of special number sequences. As a sign
of the esteem in which he’s held in the international
mathematics community, Karl Dilcher,
a current board member of the Fibonacci
Association, traveled from Nova Scotia to
Howard’s retirement dinner in April to praise
his influence on him personally and for his
contributions to the Fibonacci Association.
“I will miss interacting with students,” says
Howard, who will still teach one course next
fall. “I’ve enjoyed helping students, being a
friend and mentor, as well as their teacher.
And I’ve enjoyed being an integral part of the
math department.”
—By Kerry M. King (’85)
www.wfu.edu/wowf June 2009 19