"The Beauty of Math: Doug Clark"

Hackley Mathematics Teacher Since 1980
Chair, Mathematics Department 1990-1998

Doug Clark, The Wallace W. McLean Chair for Mathematics and Science, has held his Chair since 1990—longer than any other chair holder—and is therefore the first teacher profiled. Gerry Murphy, former Chair of the Math Department, held the McLean Chair prior to Doug.

The Wallace W. McLean Chair for Mathematics and Science was established through the generosity of Wallace Willard McLean ’35, a former trustee of Hackley School who spent his career as an engineer. He donated this Chair, Hackley’s first, in honor of the Fiftieth Reunion of his class. In a 1986 interview in the Hackley Review, Mr. McLean recalled that his teachers were “all good”-- but he particularly remembered Pop Lindsay, the teaching master who inspired Mr. McLean’s interest in math. “If your theorems didn’t come out or your angles were sloppy, he would throw a piece of chalk at your ear,” Mr. McLean said, “and he never missed.”

By Julie D. Lillis

When Doug Clark was eight, his teachers began handing him extra books to read--math books, that is. “I remember consciously thinking, ‘Well, somebody thinks I’m a math kid at this point.’ And I was. And knew it from way back then. I didn’t know I was going to be a math teacher , but I certainly was going to be a math kid.”

In any other school that kind of singling out at an early age might be remarkable, but in the context of Doug’s upbringing in a factory town it is especially “interesting,” to use his word. Before the economic bust of the Seventies, Springfield , Vermont supported four or five machine-tool factories, which employed nearly everyone who worked. Higher education was a frill, not a necessity, since those factory jobs—blue collar or white collar—did not require a college diploma. “There were 220 kids in my graduating class and maybe 40 of them went to some sort of college. Of that 40, maybe 20 or so graduated.”

By recognizing talent in an eight-year-old, and funneling extra work and praise to him, Doug’s teachers set him on a certain path, one he might not have taken otherwise. He became one of those 40 kids to go to college, majoring in math at Dartmouth . Yet this was the recession, the infamous days of the Oil Crisis, and jobs were hard to come by. As an insurance policy, Doug took education courses and student taught. “I was prepared to teach,” he says. It was his father’s idea. “I wasn’t really thinking about teaching. But my father suggested that it might be a good idea to make sure I could, considering the times.” Right after graduation, he began doing just that: first at one prep school, and then another, before moving to Hackley in 1980. “I had a great time teaching, and so here I am, 30 years later.”

Despite his reputation as a master teacher—or perhaps because of it--it might surprise you to learn that to Doug, teaching math is actually less important than teaching his students how to think. His students often understand this objective. In a recent email message, Dara Khosrowshahi ’87, CEO of Expedia.com, remembers: “He was never as interested in getting his students to the right answer as he was to teach us HOW to get there, the methodology, the understanding of how things worked, the beauty of math, which would eventually (and inevitably) get us to the right answer. Doug taught me more than math; he taught me a framework of how to THINK and how to solve problems, how to break them into their component parts and get to an easy solution—that is a value that I still carry with me to this day.”

That comment would probably please Doug immensely. Before I heard from Dara, I asked Doug what his goal is. “I’m not sure what I actually do,” he said with his characteristic wit, “but what I’m trying to do is that thing : to get them to think about things, and figure things out and realize that they can understand...how things work. I want them to know that they don’t have to memorize stuff to get through.”

That said, however, Doug is known for the high standards to which he holds his young scholars. He frequently tells the story of the two space missions to Mars that ended disastrously because “of faulty calculations.” His students, used to both his sense of humor and his insistence on precision, are equally accustomed to hearing him comment, “and the spaceship crashes” if their own calculations are “incomplete or in the wrong units,” he says.

In some math classrooms, most of what we do we owe to Doug, who served as Head of the Math and the Computer Science departments throughout much of the Nineties. “At that time most people thought of math and computer science as part of the same discipline, which they were (and are) not,” he says. “I was the one who suggested the separation and from that separation was born the department that evolved into the Computer Department that we have at Hackley today.”

During his 27 years on the Hilltop, Doug has taught a passel of courses in the Math and Computer Science departments. “I have taught Geometry, both the one-year and the two-year Algebra IIs, (and both years of the two-year course), Advanced Precalculus, AP Calculus I [AB], AP Calculus II [BC], Computer Science I and II and AP Computer Science. I now teach Advanced Precalculus, two sections of AP Calculus I, and AP Calculus II as well as SAT Review.”

Furthermore, he adds, “For several years I taught two sections of AP Calculus I, one section of AP Calculus II, and one section of AP Computer Science...I am pretty sure that I am the only teacher to teach three different AP courses during the same school year.” It bears mentioning that, in addition to the M.A. he earned while working full time at Hackley, he also graded AP exams for the College Board—in both Calculus AB and Calculus BC—the former for one year and the latter for five.

If you have taken Algebra II, Precalculus, Calculus AB or BC, you’ve felt Doug’s influence—even if he has never been your teacher. “During my time as Department Head I worked with the math teachers to design the Algebra II, Precalculus, Calculus I and Calculus II courses by sharing the assignment sheets, daily lessons, tests and quizzes that I had written over the years.” Furthermore, in the creation of the Computer Science Department, he co-wrote the materials for the three courses offered under its aegis.

“As you might guess,” observes Diana Kaplan, his successor as Head of the Math Department, “Doug’s classes are exceptionally clear and well organized. His precision and attention to detail are astonishing and the depth of his knowledge allows him to take advantage of those ‘teachable moments’ and effectively weave questions into the fabric of his class. What you might not guess, considering the seriousness of the courses that he teaches, is that his classes are a great deal of fun. Doug’s sense of humor provides many moments of levity and his students clearly enjoy their time in class.”

Affectionately teased by his students for his devotion to math, he freely cops to the charge. “I love doing math. The kids ask me all the time, ‘Are you a big nerd? Do you go home and do math on the weekends?’” Little do they know that sometimes he does just that! That said, he points out, “There’s a lot of math out there.” He got a kick out of showing me the comments about him on “RateMyTeachers.com,” especially this one: “His math party tricks resurrected my social life.”

He’ll do almost anything, he says, “to show that math is the same everywhere. It’s exactly what it looks like, because mathematics is written exactly the same way.” Not long after the AP exam last spring, for example, he trundled into his BC Calculus class one day with a big book under his arm. He set it on a desk. It was a calculus book. In Korean. “One of our Korean students left me his Korean math textbooks. It’s in Korean—except for the math. I mean, the graphs are the same, and the equations—it’s all the same. So the game became, can we figure out what the Korean is?” He and his students set to work, extrapolating from the math what the questions were.

Solving calculus problems—whether in English or Korean—is just plain fun to Doug. They are puzzles, and puzzles are sheer enjoyment. Ask him about puzzles—or pay a visit to his office at Hackley—and you will be treated to an enthusiastic discourse on them. Not the puzzles you and I think of, but three-dimensional puzzles. They are stuffed in bookshelves, hanging from his bulletin board, and in his “back room,” as he calls it, at home.

A convert to Sudoku, which he calls a “fun game,” Doug works those online and in the books his wife buys for him. In fact, he likes nearly all sorts of puzzles, and calls himself a “crossword puzzle guy.” “I do the Times [puzzle] every night,” he says. “But on Monday and Tuesday I try to do it without writing down the words.” That’s right: he does it in his head, keeping track of each word as he goes—“as a mental exercise.” I asked him why. “A few years ago I read an article [that said] if you wanted to keep your brain in shape than you should try stuff like this. And [the author suggested], ‘Come home at night and don’t turn any of the lights on. See if you can get around your house without killing yourself as a mental exercise. Can you remember where everything is?’” Doug found that suggestion very amusing, but decided to eschew it. Instead, he concocted the idea of the puzzle routine, which he loves.

Aside from working puzzles, how does he spend his weekends? “Well, the kids are involved in a lot of stuff. Josh is playing soccer now—the town leagues. And Jack’s doing Tae Kwon Do. He got his White Belt last night. It is kind of cute to see, ‘cause he’s so tiny.” Both boys are enrolled in the Lower School (Josh is in fourth grade, and Jack is in second grade). Doug met his wife Carrie right here at Hackley; she was a popular French teacher on the faculty for a number of years, and they married in 1995.

“My hobbies for a long time were sports,” he continues. “I was a big, big sports person—and I just played games all the time. You know, when I was coaching of course I had kids who had to come play with me every day”—he laughs—“so I got to play with them; and then I was in basketball leagues or softball [leagues off campus].”

Hackley harnessed that interest in and talent for sports, and for many years Doug coached team after team. “When I came here, I coached soccer and basketball. And later on, I coached golf.” His coaching continued for a decade, with a brief interlude in the spotlight very recently, when he helped coach the Girl’s Varsity Soccer Team to a championship victory as their Assistant Coach.

Even on the soccer field, says Dara Khosrowshahi , Doug did not abandon his mathematical approach to life. As the JV coach, Dara recalled in a recent email, Doug’s “approach on the field was the same intellectual approach he took in the classroom. ‘Triangle passing’ he would shout—every time a player has the ball, he taught us to form a simple triangle, to offer that player multiple and easy passing opportunities. Triangles became a religion that year, and lo and behold, you had a JV team that actually passed the ball and played with remarkable discipline and great results relative to individual skill or athletic levels. I still remember Doug’s reaction to one goal we scored after a series of passes where every player touched the ball at least once—...he positively leaped that day. That play certainly ended well, but it was the journey of the ball that made it just perfect. And that’s what Doug is all about.”

No wonder that alumni have chosen him for the Kimelman Award not once, but twice (once alone, once shared); it is the only award for Upper School teachers for outstanding teaching, bestowed upon them by the class two years out of Hackley. It is by no means the only honor he has won. Recognized a number of years ago by the College Board for the outstanding AP scores of his students, Doug continues to help his students earn high AP scores at a remarkable rate. Last year, for example, every single one of his 30 Calculus AB students scored a 5 (the highest possible AP score).

Remembered by former students as a pivotal influence in their lives, whether or not they followed a math track, Doug has influenced some to be “math kids”—just as he was tapped as a “math kid” by his teachers in a small town in Vermont. At least one became a math teacher, and returned home to the Hilltop to teach: Dianne Sullivan ’92. In an email, she remembers: “ therein lies his genius, because above all else, Doug’s class was about learning to solve problems...He certainly sprinkled in the beauty of calculus itself, but again, it was presented as an elegant method for solving a particular set of problems. And beyond the calculus, beyond the AP, isn’t that what we hope to leave any of our students with: a belief that we can truly tackle any problem?”

Along those lines, I asked him if he thought it was important to teach kids not to be afraid of math. “Yeah, or anything. You know, it’s not just math. I tell my students, ‘When you see something that looks new, don’t say, “Oh, gee, I can’t do that. ” ’ Instead, Doug says to them , “Let’s figure it out. You’re smart guys. You have big brains...Figure it out.”

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