Shirley M. Frye (née Urban) [1] is an American mathematics educator. She is the former president of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics [2] and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. [3]
Frye has a bachelor's degree from Thiel College (1951) and a master's degree from Arizona State University. [4] At Thiel College, one of her mentors was mathematics professor Nathan Harter. [1]
She worked for 40 years as a mathematics teacher, retiring in 1991. [5] In 1965 she hosted an educational television series on mathematics, on the Arizona State University channel KAET. [6]
She first joined the board of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1973, [3] while working for the Scottsdale Unified School District in Arizona, [7] and she served as president from 1988 to 1990. [3] Under her presidency, the NCTM issued a report calling for more emphasis on reasoning over rote learning in primary and secondary school mathematics education, [8] for the incorporation of calculators into classroom work, [9] and for greater connections to everyday practical problems. [10] She was quoted in Reader's Digest as dismissive of innate mathematical ability in mathematics, saying "anyone can achieve confidence in math if properly instructed". [11]
Frye was president of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics from 1981 to 1983. [2] She also served on the Mathematical Sciences Education Board of the National Research Council, and as part of that service helped author a series of primary-school mathematics textbooks. [3]
Thiel College named Frye as their distinguished alumnus of the year in 1976. [12] The National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics gave Frye their Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award in 1986. [2] Frye was the inaugural recipient of the Louise Hay Award of the Association for Women in Mathematics, in 1991. [13] [14] She won the 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. [5] [14]