George Bullis
A former UW-Platteville professor of mathematics and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, Mr. George Bullis, established an endowed scholarship for mathematics students to be awarded to an entering freshman who is intending to major in mathematics or a related field. George created the scholarship to facilitate the recruitment of good students to Platteville. George said that Roy Smith of the Physics Department had a vision to advance UW-Platteville by recruiting good mathematics students to Engineering, Mathematics and Science. These students would then attract other quality students to other parts of the campus. George, his family, friends, and students all contributed to fund the George Bullis Scholarship.
Bullis, who earned his B.S. at UW-Eau Claire in mathematics and science in 1941 and his M.A. in mathematics at UW-Madison in 1942, became an instructor of mathematics at Madison in 1942 while doing graduate work. He also did graduate work at the University of Kansas and at the Astronomy Institute. George was drafted in the spring of 1944, but his military career was a very short one. As soon as the Army realized that George had asthma, they knew they couldn’t send him to war, so they searched for jobs he could accomplish in the States. George really wanted the garbage detail, because you could be done shortly after noon and you could leave for the day. But that job was taken, so they gave him a job piling shoes by size. George was discharged from the Army in September of 1944.
“Doc” Harrell hired George in 1945. They were the only two professors in the Mathematics Department for eleven years. George and “Doc” were referred to as “the long and short of it” due to “Doc’s” small stature and George’s height of 6’8". Fellow faculty members remember George ducking at each doorway to enter a room, having a “booming” voice corresponding with his size, and having a passion for playing cards. George organized a group of students to play cards as a means of improving their math skills.
During 1945-1947, George assisted Dr. Glen Gundy in mechanics and chemistry. George said that he never considered himself a mathematician, but rather thought of himself as a math teacher. He was the Dean of Arts and Sciences for eight and a half years from 1968 to 1977, a counselor for Alpha Kai Sigma, a member of American Men of Science, a member of Who’s Who in the Midwest, and a chair for the Wisconsin Mathematics Association of America.
Of his greatest accomplishments, George said that the most gratifying was seeing Platteville become a college/university. He taught here for thirty-nine years and worked very hard to improve standards to make UW-Platteville an “acceptable” institution. Because he and “Doc” worked so hard, many students in the early 1950s went to graduate school. “Before that, few even considered attending grad school.”
George Bullis helped establish the requirement that elementary teachers take arithmetic courses in order to teach them. George was also helpful in recruitment of students. He organized a group of about 60 representatives from the college that would go out to high schools to prepare students for college life. He was instrumental in creating the Student Athletic Publicity Service (SAPS) to qualify cheerleaders, determine an athlete of the week, and a Pioneer of the week. Furthermore, he helped establish an award to the best freshman math student (giving a book of tables as the prize—back then there weren’t calculators, so the book of tables was an excellent reward to a math scholar).
George Bullis passed away in early 2014. His legacy lives on through the generations of students he taught, the institutional standards he helped build, and the scholarship that continues to bring exceptional young mathematicians to UW-Platteville