Marcia P. Sward

Marcia Peterson Sward (February 1, 1939 – September 21, 2008) was an American mathematician and nonprofit organization administrator. She had a varied career as a teacher and an administrator of mathematical organizations, culminating in the position of executive director of the Mathematical Association of America. After retirement she started a new career in environmental education, specializing in children's programs such as GreenKids.

Life and education Sward was born Marcia Ruth Peterson in Maywood, Illinois

She received a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1961. She received a master's degree in 1963 and a PhD in mathematics in 1967 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her PhD thesis was written under Edward J. Scott and titled The Mixed Boundary Value Problem Along the Line of Parabolicity for a Certain Class of Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations.

Sward died in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2008. Her first executive position was as the first Associate Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America. Among the duties of the newly created position were directing the organization's three journals and creating a newsletter that turned out to be MAA Focus. Sward became the newsletter's first editor and held that position for the remainder of her time as Associate Executive Director.

In 1999 Sward retired from the executive director position and spent a year sailing in The Bahamas. She switched careers again to work with the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation as senior director for education and environment and then in 2004 became Deputy Executive Director of the Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States.

Selected publications