Nkechi Agwu

Nkechi Madonna Adeleine Agwu (born October 8, 1962 in Enugu (Nigeria) ) is an American mathematician , mathematics historian and university teacher. She is a naturalized American citizen, professor of mathematics at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York and director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship college.

life and work

Nkechi left Nigeria during the civil war in 1968 on the Red Cross's last evacuation flight to Biafra . She was taken with her mother and siblings to a refugee camp in Femando Po (now Bioko ), Equatorial Guinea , and was given a visa to enter Sierra Leone , where they arrived in a third refugee camp in Freetown . Most of her family returned to her father in Nigeria after the war ended in 1970. However, she stayed as a student at Fourah Bay College Elementary School in Freetown, Sierra Leone and then at Annie Walsh Memorial School . In 1980 she returned to Nigeria and studied mathematics at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka , and in 1984 earned a bachelor's degree with honors. After working as a government statistician and lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic , she studied at the University of Connecticut in 1987 . Her studies were funded through a Mathematical Association of America travel award and an award to fund the study of the history of mathematics in the classroom. In 1989, she received a Masters in Mathematics and moved to Syracuse University in New York State . In 1995 she did her PhD with Howard Cornelius Johnson at Syracuse University with the dissertation: Using a Computer Laboratory Setting to Teach College Calculus. She decided to stay in the United States and was appointed teaching assistant and coordinator of the teaching and learning center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. She married Nicholas CB Ogbonna and had a son Ngozichukwuka Jacob AD Agwu, who was born in 1998. From 1997 to 2002 she studied the history of mathematics and wrote in particular the biographies of African and Afro-American mathematicians and scientists. She led a team at the Mathematical Association of America and was a contributing writer. In 2000, she received an award from the American Mathematical Association for developing a course for teaching statistics using biographical material. In 2009 she was elected president of the New York branch of the American Association of University Women . In 2014 she received a Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellowship, with which she was able to spend three weeks in Nigeria for the project “Culture and Women's Stories: A Framework for Capacity Building in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics”.

Publications

• Nma Jacob, God's Own: The Genesis of Mathematical Story-Telling: NiWARD Story of Nkechi Madonna Adeleine Agwu, Ph.D. (Global Gospel Empowerment Commission, UK, 2015).
• Celebrating the passing of an icon Jacob Ukeje Agwu (16 August 1925–7 June 2008), JU Agwu International Conference and Media Center Ozuitem, 2018
• TNJ Staff, Nkechi Madonna Adeleine Agwu, Ph.D., The network Journal: Black Professionals and Small Business Magazine (July 10, 2010).

Web links

• dissertation
• Biography (MacTutor)
• STEM program focuses on mathematical storytelling
• Making Math More Meaningful