Since her appointment to the faculty in 1991, Rebecca Pierce has distinguished herself in activities that champion the education of women and girls, contributing to the improvement of gender-fair education in Indiana.

She has consistently advocated for the recruitment and retention of girls and women in mathematics, science and engineering courses, encouraged them to pursue careers in these areas and maintained involvement in organizations with similar goals.

At the same time, she has modeled the exemplary mathematics professor. The first tenured female statistician in the mathematical sciences department, she has published more than 20 papers, six book chapters and one book. She has also received 12 grants and made 61 presentations at conferences here and abroad.

In 1993, Pierce and the late Bernadette Perham organized the first Ball State Mathematics Day, and in 1995, they received a $165,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Model Projects for Women and Girls. This grant brought high school girls to campus for a program that increased career awareness and skill development.

For the last eight years, she has directed Big M, the Ball State summer residential program for gifted fifth- and sixth-graders.

She also was the mathematics curriculum director for the Javits grant awarded to Ball State and the Indianapolis Public Schools in 1999. Through this grant, she trained more than 200 teachers to differentiate instruction in mathematics. In 2002, she coauthored a $2.5 million grant that established in all 52 IPS elementary schools cluster grouping as a means to serve gifted students.            

In these ways and many others, Pierce has opened the minds of youth to their potential and helped to create tomorrow's teachers, doctors, architects and scientists.