UCLA Social Sciences Initiative (SSI)
Brief Biography of Robert P. Moses
Robert P. (Bob) Moses resides in Jackson, Mississippi and Miami, Florida, with his wife, Dr. Janet Moses, M.D. They have four children. Mr. Moses was born and raised in Harlem, NY, and received his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1956. In 1957, he received a Masters Degree in Philosophy from Harvard University and he taught middle school mathematics at the Horace Mann School in New York City from 1958-1961.
During his young adult life, Mr. Moses was a pivotal organizer for the civil rights movement as a field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was director of SNCC’s Mississippi Project. He also served as Co-Director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a group that comprised all the major civil rights organizations working in Mississippi at the time. In that capacity, he was recognized as a driving force behind the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 and in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, NJ. From 1969-1976, he worked for the Ministry of Education in Tanzania, East Africa, where he was a teacher and chairperson of the math department at the Samé school.
Mr. Moses returned to Cambridge, MA in 1976 to continue to pursue doctoral studies in Philosophy at Harvard University. A MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1982 to 1987, Mr. Moses used his fellowship to work full-time teaching algebra to seventh and eighth graders as a school volunteer in the Open Program of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in Cambridge, MA. During that period, Mr. Moses developed the concept for the Algebra Project and began to carry it out together with concerned parents, teachers, educators and activists founding the Algebra Project in the early 1980s and incorporating in 1991. Bob Moses is the author of the Algebra Project-Transition Curriculum, which uses experiential learning drawn from the work of Dewey, Lewin, Piaget, Quine, and Kolb—and a five-step curricular process Moses innovated—to help middle school students make the conceptual shift from arithmetic to algebra and be prepared for algebra in the eighth grade, and thus a college preparatory math sequence in high school. These materials formed the backbone of Algebra Project teacher and trainer training, and implementation throughout the USA during the 1990s, with a particular focus on the Southern U.S. Mr. Moses is founder and president of the Algebra Project Inc., and also serves as director of the project’s curriculum development program, while teaching algebra and geometry full-time at Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi. Through a partnership with the Algebra Project Inc., Mr. Moses is an Eminent Scholar at the Center for Urban Education & Innovation at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.
The Algebra Project’s work has been supported by numerous generous grants from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, AmeriCorps, the Open Society Institute, The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Lilly Endowment Inc., the Tides Foundation-Community Development Fund, the Heron Foundation, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the WK Kellogg Foundation, Working Assets™, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Annenberg Rural Challenge, the Barr Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Funding Exchange, the Poss Family Foundation, the Vanguard Public Foundation, as well as through direct service contracts with school districts and individual donations. The AP Inc. received a three-year award from the National Science Foundation in December of 2002 for the development of selected experiential mathematics modules for previously under-represented populations (award # ESI-0137855), to produce ninth grade algebra I course modules, and in the spring of 2005 was awarded supplemental NSF funding for additional evaluation activities and an advisory board of experts. In July 2006, the National Science Foundation awarded the Algebra Project Inc a Short Term Grant for Education Research, #ESI-0600793, “Tracking Katrina: Algebra Project Instructional Materials Development Using Stories by Displaced New Orleans Students.” (2006-2008)
Mr. Moses has received several college and university honorary doctorate degrees and other honors, including the University of Colorado, School of Education John Dewey Prize for Progressive Education (to be awarded 2007), the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. Foundation Fellowship from Harvard University WEB DuBois Institute (2005), the McGraw-Hill prize in Education (2004), the James Conant Bryant Award from the Education Commission of the States (2002), the Mary Chase Smith Award for American Democracy from the National Association of Secretaries of State (2002), the Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship (2001), and the Heinz Award for the Human Condition (2000), Mr. Moses’ life and the work of the Algebra Project has been chronicled in several historical accounts of the Civil Rights Movement and more recent national and local press—in print, radio and film. Mr. Moses, with Charles E. Cobb, Jr., authored Radical Equations—Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project (Beacon Press, 2001), which is in its fourth printing, has sold over 12,000 copies and also has won several awards. PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers featured Bob and the Algebra Project in late 2002. Mr. Moses and the Algebra Project were featured in a March 2004, K-12 mathematics assessment conference at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, CA. Mr. Moses has received honorary doctorate degrees from a variety of institutions, including, Harvard University, Colby College, Middlebury College, Syracuse University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, Muhlenberg College, Princeton University, Hunter College and the University of Michigan, among others. Most recently, Mr. Moses has been honored to accept the Frank H. T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Visiting Professorship at Cornell University (2006 ongoing to 2009).
“The most important product of the Algebra Project … continues to be the young students whom it serves. I think of the Project as working the demand side of the education conundrum that America faces. In the 60s, we were young and organizing an older generation to make appropriate demands on the country. In the year 2000 plus, we are older and organizing a younger generation to do the same. In those times, we organized Mississippi Sharecroppers around the right to vote and political access. In my mind, young black students in Mississippi and in most of the country who make demands to be educated follow in this organizing tradition. In these times, we organize Mathematics Literacy Workers around education and economic access.”
-Bob Moses
SOCIAL SCIENCES INITIATIVE