Golden to the Core
Mark Conger’s unique journey to a PhD and the lasting impact on U-M STEM
—By Kahler Tomlin
Sitting in my LSA Honors orientation in the summer of 2019, the office’s receptionist came up to me saying that someone wanted to meet with me in the conference room. As I approached the room, I saw a man with a bucket of soapy water and a hat covered with chalk embossed with the lettering “DHSP.” I took a seat across from him and he asked, “Wanna do a math problem?” This initial meeting would be the start of a relationship that would make the most lasting impact on my life here at the University of Michigan. As I came to learn, I was not the only one who had a similar experience.
Mark Conger, the head of the Douglass Houghton Scholars Program (DHSP), is an educator who assists and shares his wisdom with about 40 freshmen a year. He leads a workshop in the fall and winter semesters that offers four hours a week for students to hone their skills in Math 115 (Calculus 1) and 116 (Calculus 2) while discovering interesting applications of calculus. He has been the head of DHSP since 2007 and continues to evolve his program to be one of the most helpful yet unknown groups on campus. With delicious snacks, a DHSP flag, a pocket spoon, and a contagious smile on his face, Conger sits daily in the atrium of East Hall eager to help his current students and DHSP alums in any way he can. It is there where I meet Conger almost every day to discuss troubling math problems and the struggles of life. I have always seen Mark as a selfless individual and mentor who gives so much of himself, but I have always wondered: what did he do before taking over DHSP, and how much does teaching mean to him?
Before college
When I meet a college professor, I want to ask them why a career in academia is appealing to them. In doing so, I came to find out it wasn’t Mark who chose math, but quite the opposite “When I was in either the 1st or 2nd grade, I had to write my name on something and I wrote ‘MA’ then ‘TH’. I always identified that way.” It was then that his love for math was just beginning. On a snow day during grade school, after doing a few trigonometry problems, he finally caught on to patterns, thus recognizing his ability to do things that others could not. Similarly, he was a whiz around a computer in the 80s, giving him an undeniable “geeky power.” From that point on, Conger made it a mission to show people that mathematics is not a jumble. “Math creates order in the world,” he says. “I try to get that across to people but it’s hard.”
College in one take…or two
Despite my previous notion that all professors took the same track to a PhD (a few years of graduate school and then obtaining the doctorate in consecutive years), Mark made it clear that this was not the case for him. His first year of graduate school, 1990, “was good, I lived with my now good friends. We took the same classes, worked on homework together, and stayed up late doing work.” As with any honeymoon phase, it must come to an end. When he began teaching as a GSI here at U-M, Conger struggled to discover a balance between teaching and learning. After teaching Math 105 and 115 here twice respectively, “There was not a question I couldn’t answer.” It seemed to me that was when the seed was planted for Conger to become an amazing educator, even though his own educational progress stalled.
As a result, Mark took a break and spent three-and-a-half years as a programmer in the Ann Arbor area, but soon realized, “I felt like I couldn’t learn any more from the Discovery Channel. I wanted to learn more, I wanted to go back to school.” When he decided to return to Michigan, it wasn’t in the Math Department. “In January 1999…I walked into Physics 160: Honors Physics. I went and asked the professor if I could sit in his class: ‘I am not actually a student. I am just a guy off the street.’” Upon being given permission to sit in, Conger did every homework and even bought the textbook, all to recognize a hidden love for physics. It was when he couldn’t find a physics class to take at the University that Conger took a math course again. After taking a 500-level course, he exclaimed, “I realized I liked math more,” then reentered the PhD program, but with a different mentality. As an adult, paying for something creates this sense of determination from taking pride in your actions. Conger followed this by saying to himself every morning, “I want that goddamned PhD.” Despite all the trials and tribulations, Mark earned his PhD in Mathematics five years later in 2007.
The Conger era of DHSP
Following a wedding toast, Mark was asked to take over DHSP. From that moment onward, Mark has stuck with DHSP and never turned back. Speaking from personal experience, I can attest to Mark being at the Comprehensive Studies Program office from roughly nine in the morning to nine at night. He always had a snack at the ready and scratch paper to guide whomever through challenging problems. Sadly, this was pre-Covid. My freshman year was cut short due to Covid-19, so we had to move virtually; it was then that Mark’s selflessness was most obvious.
As a programmer, Conger is no stranger to coding, so he used his skills to create Google Jamboards and Docs days in advance so his DHSP sections could run smoothly. He shared, “Every night I would do that, and make a worksheet, and then spend about an extra hour or so every night to get everything ready.” He even went to the extent of writing code for a camera to strictly take board shots of a chalkboard for students to regain an in-person experience.
Once students returned to campus, Conger was displaced from the CSP office, thus having to make East Hall DHSP headquarters. He still has boatloads of snacks from Costco and offers his advice daily. Conger compiled a spreadsheet to host both virtual and online options that run during the weekdays until well after his last DHSP section. Despite drastic changes in the educational environment in which Mark was teaching, he always made sure to be accommodating to all of his students, both past and present.
Golden Apple
In the Winter 2019 term, Conger was honored with the Golden Apple Award. Unlike any other given to faculty, this distinction is awarded by U-M students. When he earned the Golden Apple, he said joyfully, “It was a moment when I really finally felt like there was some official recognition.” Since DHSP is a group more than an actual class, with roughly 40 students annually, it kind of flies under the radar. Mark told me how a DHSP alum implored her fellow alumni to nominate him for the award. Of the 132 that nominated him, 89 came to support him in his award lecture at Rackham. I asked Conger about what the alum and his family being in attendance meant to him: “I got to have my moment, and that’s more than most people could say.”
The ways in which Mark Conger guided my academic and personal life are immeasurable. On the DHSP website, other students have shared what Mark has done for them. DHSP alum Jessica Middleton commented, “Between having access to a community of incredible people to extra tutoring to Mark’s inspiring dedication to students, DHSP truly made my freshman year.” The connections that Mark fosters with his students extend far beyond the bounds of campus. His desire for all of his students to succeed and the ways in which he accomplishes that is what truly makes him the most influential educator at the University of Michigan.
Feature photo, Conger with DHSP alum Wilhelmina Schuster; photo credit, Kahler Tomlin