Martha Wood began teaching mathematics at Clayton State University from its beginning in1969 as a junior college. During her tenure she witnessed a surge in enrollment of students who weren’t ready for college-level math.
To deal with the problem, she co-wrote remedial arithmetic and algebra texts in cooperation with other math faculty members.
One of them, Peggy Cappell of Forest Park, said Dr. Wood -- always highly esteemed by her students and academic peers -- became interested in how the unprepared students learned and whether they had the capacity to advance to more complex forms of math.
In her late 50s, her curiosity led her to study at Georgia State University for a doctorate in educational psychology.
In the process, she became familiar with the work of Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist still active at age 91, who maintains that a person’s intelligence is not fixed for a lifetime but can grow using various cognitive techniques.
Impressed with his theories and methods, Dr. Wood made numerous trips to Israel to confer with Dr. Feuerstein, becoming a close colleague and friend.
In 2000 Dr. Wood founded the Southeastern Center for Enhancement of Learning to provide training in Dr. Feuerstein’s principles.
Under her leadership, SCEL has trained hundreds of educators, child psychologists and parents from around the nation and world, said Dr. Jan Scott, SCEL’s acting director.
Dr. Wood remained a prominent figure at Clayton State long after her retirement in the early 1990s. Her sons set up an endowment fund in her name to pay for three scholarships a year to enable faculty members at the university to improve their teaching expertise and mastery of teaching theory.
Martha Louise Maxwell Wood, 82, died Wednesday at the Vitas Hospice in Stockbridge of complications from breast cancer. A memorial service will be at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Jones Memorial United Methodist Church, Lake City. Thomas Scroggs Funeral Directors is in charge of arrangements.
Born in Memphis, she graduated magna cum laude from Mississippi College with a major in math and a minor in music.
Her nephew, William Bugg of Birmingham, a retired music professor at Samford University, said Dr. Wood, like all her siblings and most of her forbears, was born “with a music gene.” She was a soprano and sang in church choirs, often as a soloist, most of her life.
She came to the Atlanta area in the mid-1950s with her husband, Jim Wood Jr., whom she had met when the two of them worked in LaGrange. She taught math at Forest Park High School, and the couple lived in Forest Park until last year, when they moved into a seniors residence in Jonesboro.
After earning a master’s at Emory University, she accepted an offer to teach at Clayton State.
Dr. Wood was a devoted member of Jones Memorial Church, teaching Sunday school, serving on its administrative board and, of course, singing in the choir. She also was a lay leader in the UMC’s North Georgia district.
In 1986 she and her husband played a key role in founding Arts Clayton, a public-private organization that sponsors monthly themed exhibits at two art galleries in the county.
“If it hadn’t been for the vision and leadership of Martha and Jim Wood and the publicity we got in the local newspaper he ran at the time, we would not have gotten Arts Clayton off on such a positive note,” said its director, Linda Summerland of Jonesboro.
Survivors include her husband of 57 years; four sons, Jim Wood III of Chamblee, Max Wood of Macon, Farrar Wood of Jonesboro and Chris Wood of Athens; a sister, Janie Pople of Germantown, Tenn.; and seven grandchildren.
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