Stanley Pride

In Memoriam

Stan Pride passed away unexpectedly on April 11, 2020.   He is survived by his two children, Ginger and Colby Pride as well as his mother, Emily Basinger and her partner Francis, and his two sisters, Cynthia and Laura Pride.  He will be greatly missed by the entire Mathematics Department. Just before his passing, as the School of Mathematics Academic Technologist, Stan had taken on a leadership role for the whole department in the ramp up to remote learning during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.  He was tireless and completely committed to the effort, spending innumerable hours supporting the Faculty and all Mathematics instructors in this mission critical endeavor. 

Stan grew up in Bloomington Minnesota and graduated from Bloomington Jefferson High School in 1985. He attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate and was a lifelong learner. He recently completed a course in Educational Psychology and had a keen interest in Machine Learning and Neural Networks. Stan spent most of his professional career developing tools for Plato Learning and brought his years of experience in educational software to the University of Minnesota.

Stan served as the School of Mathematics Academic Technologist from 2018-2020. He was hired to oversee the Minnesota Online Learning System (MOLS) project which houses the Math Placement Exams and is the automated homework system for the PreCalculus sequence. Stan’s passion and talents went far beyond what he was asked to do. Stan took the lead in the further development of MOLS and worked tirelessly with Wolfram Research to advance the usability for students. Stan also was instrumental in the publishing of a video textbook series in PreCalculus, managing the project and adding animation to the videos to bring the mathematics to life.

Stan was active in the Open Education community and was a leader in the MAA North Central Section Special Interest Group on Open Educational Resources. Stan believed in the philosophy of open education and that there were things that we could do to make education more accessible for all. He worked on projects to incorporate accessibility into the platform and helped to advance the design of the Distributed Open Educational Network (Doenet) project.

Stan was an avid pool player and played regularly in leagues for three decades. His love for the sport and of mathematics can be seen on the cover art for the Trigonometry video text book published by the University of Minnesota libraries.