Stapleton Learning Company
MATHEMATICS TUTORING FROM GRADE SCHOOL THOUGH GRADUATE SCHOOL
Established June 2005 by Deborah and Richard Stapleton
Deborah Coleman Stapleton, BSED, MED, EDS, MSOR, is an emeritus assistant professor of mathematics at Georgia Southern University. She has an undergraduate degree in mathematics education from the University of Georgia, two masters degrees in mathematics education from Georgia Southern University, and a masters degree in operations research from Georgia Tech. She started out at the University of Georgia, majoring in speech pathology, following the lead of her Aunt Tommie, Tommie Jean Corbett, at one-time secretary to President Zack Henderson at Georgia Southern University, who became a professional speech pathologist counseling primarily children and young adults with learning difficulties.
Debbye was always relatively talented in mathematics, and she decided at the University of Georgia mathematics was her long suit, so she switched her major from speech pathology to become a math teacher. While teaching in Montgomery and Toombs County public schools near Vidalia, she furthered her education in mathematics education, driving to Statesboro for courses at Georgia Southern. At a later date, she moved to Atlanta and lived with her Aunt Tommie while earning a masters degree at Georgia Tech in operations research, considering for a time pursuing a career in operations research in industry. After finishing her MSOR from Georgia Tech and interviewing a few corporations for operations research positions, she decided the corporate life was not for her. She then came back to Georgia Southern and taught math in the mathematics and learning support departments.
After marrying her husband, Rick, in 1989 and after the learning support department at Georgia Southern was discontinued, she transferred to the Georgia Southern business school where she taught business statistics and decision science courses and crunched the statistical numbers for quite a few research papers she co-authored with Rick through the years.
Debbye co-founded Stapleton Learning Company in June 2005 after retiring at Georgia Southern and has tutored students in mathematics subjects ranging from basic grade school arithmetic to college-level Calculus II. Most of her tutorees at Stapleton Learning Company have been high school students preparing for what lies ahead in university math courses and Georgia Southern students who have had difficulties in their math courses. She has tutored high school students taking courses in college prep math and college students taking math department courses in modeling, algebra, statistics, plane geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. She has also tutored students taking courses in business school statistics, decision science, and operations management.
She quickly flunked out of retirement in 2005. In addition to teaching two modeling courses part-time each fall in the math department at Georgia Southern, she has been busy tutoring since 2005, generally from four to eight hours per day. Debbye's tutorees do well in their math courses and are satisfied with the results of their one-on-one tutoring.
For information regarding Mrs. Stapleton's hourly fee and schedule, contact her at (912) 687-1094 or dstapleton@bulloch.net.
Richard John Stapleton, BS, MBA, Ph.D., CTA is an emeritus professor of entrepreneurship, small business, and business policy at Georgia Southern University where he taught small business, operations management, organizational behavior, management information systems, control, entrepreneurship, business policy, and business ethics 37 years. He has a BS in economics, an MBA in organizational behavior, and a Ph.D. in management science, all from Texas Tech University during 1962-1969. He received a professional certification in transactional analysis in 1978 from the International Transactional Analysis Association, a CTA (Certified Transactional Analyst). Richard trained and consulted using transactional analysis at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, NC, during 1975-1978.
He worked ten years for his parents to age 21 in 1962 in their small businesses at Wolfforth, Texas, ten miles from Lubbock, started from scratch in 1950, including a lumber yard and hardware store, farms, ranches, a housing subdivision, a natural gas pipeline installation, and service business, a farm irrigation and home water pump installation and service business, and a bank. He started and ran two businesses of his own at age 22—a weekly newspaper, the Wolfforth-Frenship Gazette, and Rick Stapleton Agency, a fire and casualty insurance agency, a real estate brokerage, and a mortgage loan brokerage—before returning to Texas Tech for graduate work at age 25, has decided to move on from his small hometown. He made a profit in his businesses, which he sold. He documented these experiences in his 2008 book, Business Voyages.
In addition to teaching a full load of courses every quarter or semester throughout his career at Georgia Southern from July 1970-June 2005, he supervised student teams consulting with over 300 small businesses in Southeast Georgia and directed a Small Business Institute for 18 years. He has researched, written, and published 47 refereed scholarly articles and 5 books. He founded the Entrepreneurship/Small Business Emphasis in the business school at Georgia Southern in 1987.