Joella Hardeman Gipson-Simpson (January 8, 1929 – January 31, 2012) was an American musician, mathematician, and educator who became the first
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
student at
Mount St. Mary's College
Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles (known as Mount St. Mary's College until January 2015) is a private, Catholic university primarily for women, in Los Angeles, California. Women make up ninety percent of the student body.
It was found ...
in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
.
Early life and music education
Joella Hardeman was born in Los Angeles on January 8, 1929, and began studying music at age eight. After graduating from Saint Agnes High School, a Catholic school in Los Angeles that operated from 1919 to 1953, she entered
Mount St. Mary's College
Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles (known as Mount St. Mary's College until January 2015) is a private, Catholic university primarily for women, in Los Angeles, California. Women make up ninety percent of the student body.
It was found ...
, becoming the first African American student accepted there. She majored in music performance and minored in English and philosophy, graduating in 1950, and won a graduate scholarship to the
State University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 coll ...
, where she earned a master's degree in
music education
Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do origina ...
in 1951.
With this, she began a career in music education, teaching at a number of institutions including
Southern University
Southern University and A&M College (Southern University, Southern, SUBR or SU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is the largest historically black college or university (HBCU) in Louisiana, a ...
in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...
, where she was listed in 1955 as a faculty sponsor for the local chapter of the
Music Educators National Conference
The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) is an organization of American music educators dedicated to advancing and preserving music education as part of the core curriculum of schools in the United States. Founded in 1907 as the Mus ...
. At Southern University, she met Theodore Horace Gipson, who became her husband and the father of her daughter.
Later life and mathematics education
Joella Gipson and her husband moved back to Los Angeles, and Joella Gipson became a teacher and supervisor for the
Los Angeles Unified School District
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest public school system in California in terms of number of students and the 2nd largest public school district in ...
. It was in this part of her life that her interests shifted to mathematics, and she became certified as a mathematics teacher, regularly attending
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
sponsored mathematics institutes from 1958 to 1969. Her husband Theodore Gipson died in Los Angeles in 1972.
In 1971, Gipson earned a doctorate in mathematics education from the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...
, with the dissertation ''Teaching probability in the elementary school: an exploratory study'', supervised by John A. Easley Jr. Her dissertation also cites the mentorship of Max Beberman, who died before it could be completed. After completing her doctorate, she became an associate professor at
Wayne State University
Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...
in 1972, and was promoted to full professor in 1978. She served as a
Fulbright Scholar
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
in
Belize
Belize (; bzj, Bileez) is a Caribbean and Central American country on the northeastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a wate ...
in 1994, and again in Romania in 1998. At Wayne State, she also directed the master's program in teaching, the Women, Minorities, and Handicapped Program in Education, and a mathematics education institute, and chaired a commission on the status of women at the university.
Gipson married her second husband, William Lawrence Simpson, in 1980. While teaching at Wayne state, she lived across the nearby Canadian border in
Windsor, Ontario
Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the souther ...
. Her husband died in 2005, and she retired as a
professor emerita
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
after 35 years of service at Wayne State in 2007. She died in Windsor on January 31, 2012.
Books
Gipson was the coauthor of ''Consumer and Career Mathematics'' (with L. Carey Bolster and H. Douglas Woodburn, Scott & Foresman, 1978) and ''
Black Mathematicians and Their Works'' (with
Virginia Newell, L. Waldo Rich, and Beauregard Stubblefield, Dorrance & Company, 1980). She also edited ''Impetus, the Black Woman: Proceedings of the Fourth National Congress of Black Women of Canada'' (1978), and self-published ''Changing Faces of Romania'' (2000).
Recognition
Mount St. Mary's College named Gipson their outstanding alumna of the year for 1990. In 1993, she won the Wayne State University Alumni Faculty Service Award "for her outstanding work on behalf of women, minorities, and the disabled in educational leadership programs". In 2010, the Wayne State University Center for Peace and Conflict Studies gave her their lifetime achievement award.
A scholarship at Wayne State University, the Joella Gipson Endowed Scholarship for Peace and Human Rights Education, is named for her.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gipson, Joella
1929 births
2012 deaths
American music educators
American women music educators
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
American women mathematicians
African-American mathematicians
Mount St. Mary's University (Los Angeles) alumni
University of Iowa alumni
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
Southern University faculty
Wayne State University faculty
American emigrants to Canada
20th-century African-American people
20th-century African-American women
21st-century American women