Biography for

Art Miller

After graduation from Brecksville Art attended Hiram College where he met his future wife, Anne. His first impulse was to major in Chemistry, but after working summers at the BF Goodrich Research Lab in Brecksville he decided that the he preferred the smell of Mathematics. After college he went to graduate school in Mathematics at Syracuse University, earning a Masters and PhD degree. During his PhD program, his graduate thesis supervisor decided to take an “around the world” sabbatical. Art did not go around the world, but went to London, England, to work on his PhD and await the arrival of his supervisor. Two weeks before departing for England on a student ship, he and Anne discovered she was expecting; and his daughter, Jennifer, was born in England one month before he returned to the US in 1970.

Art completed his PhD in Mathematics (1971) and landed a teaching job in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, where he and Anne thought they would remain “for a few years”…and 40 years later they are still there.

Art was Head of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Mount Allison for 6 years. In 1980 he was the coach of the Mount Allison Women's Volleyball team for one year; and in 2001 he used a sabbatical leave to return to the classroom as a student (Master of Electronic Commerce, Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia), graduating as the oldest (age 60) student in the School of Computer Science.

The most unusual thing that Art has done is to have started a software company, Internet Software Technologies, in 1995 at the beginning of the “internet/www explosion”. The company was the sole supplier of Windows internet software to NBTel, the only source of internet connectivity in the province of New Brunswick . That “15 minutes of fame” ended, and it was only later that he and his partners learned that NBTel had dumped them and had made a deal with Netscape (where are they now ?). But it was fun while it lasted!

Art was active in the establishment of the Tantramar Seniors' College (50+), has served as Vice President of the organization, and has taught computer and tennis courses to seniors. He is active in the local Presbyterian Church where he is currently Chairman of the Board of Management (that means he gets to do all the cleanup jobs when there is no one else to do them).

Art and Anne have been married 44 years and have three children. Their daughter, Jennifer (40), is expecting her first child in April of 2011, has studied acting in NYC, and has a theatre company in Quebec. Their son, Jason (34), just completed an Economics degree in Florida and plans to go to graduate school; and their son, Jonny (32), is a software designer in Moncton, New Brunswick, and the father of a two year old daughter and a set of one month old twin boys.

In his retirement (2008) Art has had more time for tennis, bicycling, and cross country skiing. During the first year of his retirement he competed in the Canada Senior Games and managed to win a Gold medal in 65+ mixed doubles and a Bronze in 65+ men’s doubles. His greatest interests (aside from Anne, his three children, and 3.5 grandchildren) are carpentry, landscaping, and gardening. He says, “I am a carpenter at heart, but I taught mathematics for a living”. Since his great grandfather was a farmer, a carpenter, and a math teacher, he comes by it naturally.