About the Author and Contributing Author

During his tenure at Baltimore City Community College (BCCC), Dr. Bucher was honored as the Maryland Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). He served as the first Director of BCCC's Institute for InterCultural Understanding (IIU). Under his leadership, the IIU gained national recognition as an innovative diversity education program.

Rich's interest in diversity issues began as an undergraduate student at Colgate University. He received his B.A. from Colgate, M.A. from New York University, and Ph.D. from Howard University, all in sociology. At Howard, his field of specialization was race and ethnic relations, with a minor in education.

As a professor, Dr. Bucher created and taught courses dealing with diversity, worked on national grants to infuse diversity into the curriculum, published numerous professional articles as well as three books, served as an editorial consultant on diversity, and presented at national and international conferences.

Rich has always been actively involved in the community. Each year, he talks to youth and adults about diversity and the role it has played in his personal and professional life. Rich describes himself as a family man and fitness enthusiast. He and his wife, Pat, live in Frederick, Maryland. Rich loves being a dad as well as "Papi" to his four grandchildren.

Rich's oldest son, Jimmy, is autistic and lives in nearby Ellicott City. Jimmy works full-time pushing shopping carts at Walmart, a job he has held for two decades (quite an accomplishment to say the least!) Rich and Jimmy coach boys basketball in a faith-based sports league (Upward) that provides children with sports skills and "values for life" such as respect, teamwork, and courage. His older daughter, Katie, thoroughly enjoys being a full-time mother, and somehow finds time to be a fitness instructor. Suzy, the youngest, has worked in the field of event planning since graduating from JMU. Recently married, she's now a mother as well as the Campus Life Coordinator for Jenalia Research Campus, a pioneering research center in Ashburn, Virginia.

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ABOUT PATRICIA BUCHER (contributing author):

Patricia L. Bucher is a graduate of Skidmore College and received her Master's Degree in Mathematics Education at Western Maryland College. She has over 60 additional hours of graduate work in the areas of learning differences and behavior management. She taught at Montogomery County Pulbic Schools (MCPS) as a secondary math and computer science teacher. The student population of MCPS, located in suburban Washington, D.C., is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse in the nation. MCPS serves approximately 163,000 students who speak over 120 different languages. She has also taught at Frederick Community College, as an adjunct math professor.

Pat is an experienced, highly innovative educator. She regularly presents workshops on Teaching Mathematics to Diverse Learners. She has also received local and national recognition for her teaching excellence.

After graduating from Skidmore, Pat had a brief career as a music teacher, which included teaching children with severe emotional, developmental, and behavioral problems. She soon found out that those years would prove invaluable to her after giving birth to her first child, Jimmy, who has autism and mild cerebral palsy. The next fourteen years she spent at home teaching her own son whom many labeled as unteachable. Jimmy can now read a newspaper, watch over his finances, and hold a job. Pat says, "Those years of trying to reach and teach my son taught me more about flexible thinking and creative pedagogy than any other experience of my life."

During that time she also became the parent of two more children and a passionate advocate for children with developmental disabilities. She created a camp in Carroll County, Maryland, where none existed for children like her son, started a parent support group, and lobbied locally as well as nationally for better education opportunities for children with disabilities. She was the recipient of the "Carnation Volunteer of the Year for Central Maryland.

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