In 2001, the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, through the leadership of Sherman Riemenschneider, chair of the Department of Mathematics, established a scholarship in honor of Betty Miller, WVU associate professor of mathematics emerita.

Sarah Davis, from Wheeling, has been selected as the first recipient of the Betty Miller Scholarship. Davis plans to follow in the footsteps of Miller by pursuing a graduate degree in mathematics and later teach mathematics at the high school level.

Miller was a unique student at WVU , being the only woman who graduated with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering in 1947. When she returned to start graduate school, Miller was told by one of her engineering professors that she could not pursue an advanced degree in engineering. Instead, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in mathematics, which she describes as a”good, solid science.”

In 1957 she was hired as a faculty member in the WVU Mathematics Department. During her tenure, she received many awards, including the Eberly College’s Outstanding Teacher Award, the Golden Key Award, WVU Foundation Outstanding Teacher Award, and the Gamma Sigma Delta Teaching Award.

The scholarship in her name was established to recognize her 35 years as a dedicated teacher of calculus at WVU .

The Betty Miller Scholarship is to be awarded to an outstanding senior mathematics major. Miller recalls that she too received financial assistance in her senior year and was honored for her academic work.

The merit-based scholarship recognizes three years of outstanding academic work and will be awarded in the first semester of the student’s senior year. The scholarship support is intended for students who do not already have significant financial aid.

“I hope to become an excellent math teacher at a West Virginia high school,”she says,”I have a love and passion for mathematics and feel that I can show students that math is a subject to be revered not feared. In my career, my goal is to head a math department at a high school whose students will find that math is a wonderful subject.”

Davis, a WVU Honors student, has been allowed the experience to test out her teaching skills. She currently is tutoring in the Eberly College’s Math Learning Center as well as participating in an internship at the Jefferson Lab’s National Accelerator Facility.

“Sarah is an intelligent young woman whose thorough understanding of mathematics will clearly contribute to whatever career she chooses,”says Christine Wilson, lab manager of the Math Learning Center.”Even though Sarah has superior mathematical abilities, she helps students of all. It takes a special person to do this.”