History & Funding

The College of Wooster AMRE program began in 1994 as the Mathematics Clinic. The Clinic was funded by a seed grant from the Hewlett-Mellon Presidential Discretionary Fund for Institutional Advancement along with a nominal client fee, and was based on a similar program at Harvey-Mudd College. During the first summer of its operation, the program employed six students on projects with Smith Dairy and the City of Wooster.

In 1996, AMRE was employed by its first out-of-state client. The student team developed a production scheduling system for Vermeer Manufacturing of Pella, Iowa. In recent years, videoconferencing has made out-of-state clients a common occurrence, including Schneider Electric (based in Lexington, KY with teams across the globe) and Aetna/CVS Health (based in the Boston, MA area).

Professor John Ramsay, Founder of AMRE

In November of 1998, the College hosted the first AMRE Projects Day. This annual event featured presentations by the AMRE teams of the previous summer followed by a luncheon hosted by the College President. Projects Day was a good vehicle for introducing prospective clients and prospective student participants to the AMRE program. Since this time, this event has evolved into the campus-wide Experiential Learning Symposium, held annually in November. AMRE teams continue to participate in this larger event.

A major financial step in AMRE’s history occurred in 1999 when The College of Wooster Class of 1950 chose to make an endowment for AMRE part of their 50-year reunion class gift. Beginning in 2000, the endowment fund has provided about 20% of the total program operating costs.

Though AMRE had included projects outside the fields of mathematics and computer science previously, starting in 2014, there was a concerted effort to cultivate more of these projects supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation. These projects draw on student and faculty expertise in fields as varied as political science, urban studies, psychology, and philosophy. In 2015, a new position in APEX was created specifically to expand AMRE and the first three “APEX AMRE” projects were completed. Since then, APEX AMRE has continued to grow and is now an integral part of the AMRE program.

In 2015, The College of Wooster initiated an exchange with Ashesi University in Ghana.  The exchange is funded by the Noble Foundation of Wooster.  As part of this exchange, four students from Ashesi come to Wooster in the summer to participate in the AMRE program.  In 2021, this arrangement was expanded further to include additional Ashesi students working remotely with Wooster students on projects for organizations that are based in Ghana.

Now moving into our fourth decade, AMRE is proud to have worked with dozens of clients, from Fortune 50 companies to small local non-profits, including many repeat clients. Typically, AMRE employs 30-45 students per summer, working on 10-12 projects. Students are drawn from majors as diverse as Computer Science, Sociology, and Environmental Geosciences, and from countries across the world, including Ghana, Morocco, and Bangladesh. The normalization of conducting virtual meetings has created opportunities to work with students and clients from around the globe. We look forward to seeing what new projects will challenge our AMRE teams in the future.

Some Stats at a Glance…

  • 521 students have participated in the AMRE program. 89 of these students participated twice, 7 participated three times, and 1 student participated four times!
  • AMRE has been in existence for 30 years.
  • We have completed 227 projects with 74 different clients.
  • AMRE had 37 students complete a total of 11 projects in the summer of 2023.
  • Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company has sponsored 31 projects!
  • Progressive Insurance has sponsored 15 projects.
  • OSU-OARDC and The Prentke-Romich Company have each sponsored 13 projects.