Colleagues Pay Tribute to Gifted Education Pioneer Mary M. Frasier

Colleagues and educators throughout Georgia and across the nation are mourning the loss of Mary M. Frasier, a nationally recognized scholar and researcher in gifted education and founder of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development in the UGA College of Education.

Frasier passed away at her residence in Athens, GA, on February 3, 2005.

For three decades, Frasier, a professor of educational psychology, brought national and international recognition to the college for her pioneering and highly influential work in identifying and teaching students who are under-represented in gifted education programs.

As a researcher, scholar and advocate, she had a profound effect on changing the way children are assessed for gifted services. She designed the Frasier Talent Assessment Profile (F-TAP), a comprehensive assessment system with multiple indicators that is much more effective in assessing the gifts and talents of low-income and minority children than single-indicator tests previously used. She worked with school districts throughout the nation to implement this assessment.

She was president of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) from 1987-89, and received the NAGC's Distinguished Service Award in 1991, and then later the Ann F. Isaacs Founder's Memorial Award for her work with that organization.

“Gifted and talented children – particularly those representing cultural diversity – have lost a devoted advocate, researcher, and change-maker. Not only has the field lost a tireless champion, but I have lost a personal friend,” said Richard Olenchak, current president of the NAGC, and professor and director of the Urban Talent Research Institute at the University of Houston.

The state of Georgia changed its gifted program eligibility requirements to be inclusive of multiple criteria due in large part to Frasier and her work with the Georgia Department of Education Task Force on the Revision of Rules and Regulations for the Identification of Gifted Students.

Frasier was associate director and primary investigator for The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, a consortium of four universities that received $7.5 million in external funding from 1990-95. Six Georgia school districts participated in this groundbreaking research which sought better ways to identify gifted and talented students, particularly those who were under-represented in the nation's gifted programs – economically disadvantaged students, culturally and linguistically different students, students with disabilities, and certain ethnic minorities.

As a result of that research, there was a groundswell of support for reform in the field – a cry from educators across the state for a more theoretically sound, diagnostically useful and equitable way to identify children for gifted program placement.

“We worked to change state law and State Board of Education rules related to gifted education so that all Georgia schools could use the promising practices from the research study,” said Sally Krisel, Georgia 's State Coordinator for Gifted Education. “Educators across the state worked diligently to implement more comprehensive evaluation procedures that were more sensitive to individual differences and to better match gifted program options to students' identified strengths.

“We are now serving far more minority and disadvantaged students in our gifted programs, students who may well have been missed if we had not learned from Mary Frasier how to address the persistent barriers related to attitude, access, and assessment,” said Krisel, a former student of Frasier's who received her doctorate at UGA in 2000.

“This focus on equity, however, is not the only legacy of Mary Frasier's work. She taught us that we cannot have true excellence without equity and that doing the right thing for those gifted children overlooked in our traditional screening and evaluation process is the right thing to do for ALL children,” said Krisel. “All children benefit when we consciously take a proficiency view of their learning profiles, when we commit to multidimensional assessment of their abilities, and when we provide a variety of services designed to challenge them in their areas of strength.

“When Georgia educators tackled these difficult issues in the mid-90's, the rest of the country watched, wondering if we would identify too many children and, consequently, water down our programs for gifted students,” said Krisel. “I can assure you that we have not! We have made great strides in advancing equitable identification procedures and comprehensive programming for ALL gifted children . . . and we have done that, in large part, because of Mary Frasier.”

Within the college, Frasier played many vital roles. In 1984, she founded the Torrance Center for Creative Studies – named for the late UGA Distinguished Professor E. Paul Torrance, another early pioneer in gifted education – and served as its director for its first decade, then again from 1995-97.

The Torrance Center has served many local children, schools and families over the past two decades with a variety of programs including the Georgia Future Problem Solving Program, the Challenge programs and is host for many international and national visiting scholars.

Frasier also served as coordinator of the gifted and creative education program in the College for nearly 20 years. She worked selflessly as a mentor to many faculty and students during her 30-year tenure at UGA. She was appointed to the graduate faculty in 1982 and reappointed in 1989 and 1996.

She was named Aderhold Distinguished Professor in 2002, one of the highest honors in UGA's College of Education . She also received the EVE Award for Achievement in Education from the Athens Daily News/Banner-Herald, Georgia National Bank and radio stations WNGC/WGAU in 1990.

Frasier received a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Connecticut , a master's in guidance and counseling, and a bachelor's in music education, both from South Carolina State College.

The family has established a “Dr. Mary M. Frasier Memorial Fund” to receive contributions toward the development of a scholarship in her honor.  Donations should be addressed to the:
Dr. Mary M. Frasier Memorial Fund
505 Sandstone Drive
Athens , Georgia 30605

Wednesday, February 9, 2005
WRITER/CONTACT: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu