Fred Major ’97 was a senior at Birmingham-Southern when, in Dr. Ed LaMonte’s class on metropolitan government politics, students were asked to say what they wanted to do after graduation. At that point, Major was practically working full-time for Regions Investment Company (now Raymond James) and knew he would work there after earning his economics degree.

He remembers one person deciding between going to law school and becoming a teacher.

“Dr. LaMonte said, ‘When it’s all said and done, and when the archaeologists are going through the history, they’re going to find we had lots of lawyers and not enough teachers,’” Major remembers.

A little over 10 years later, Major began his first year teaching math at Mountain Brook High School, following the career in finance he prepared for throughout college. But in many ways, Major says, BSC also prepared him to be a teacher.

During his years as a municipal bond analyst at Raymond James, Major underwrote municipal bonds for cities, counties, and school boards across the state. This role put him into contact with educators around Alabama, which wasn’t completely new to him. Major comes from a family of teachers, including his father, Evan Major, former Shelby County Schools superintendent, and his mother, Linda Major, former career technical education supervisor for Shelby County.

“I did a lot of school board work,” Major says. “I was teaching a class for the Alabama Association of School Business Officials in school finance and was working with business officials in the schools.”

In 2005, his wife, Dr. Jennifer Dollar ’97, finished her anesthesiology residency (she is now Chief of Anesthesia at Children’s of Alabama), allowing Major the perfect opportunity to change career paths. He loved his time working with kids as a counselor and program director at Camp Sumatanga, and he had years of experiences working with Alabama school boards and getting a glimpse into the public school system.

It was settled: Major enrolled in the UAB fifth-year master’s program in math education. When he asked then-Mountain Brook Schools Superintendent Charles Mason for a recommendation letter, Mason obliged only if Major agreed to interview for a position at a Mountain Brook school. He did, and joined the Mountain Brook High School math department in 2008.

Major now teaches Advanced Placement courses in statistics and computer science – both of which he started at Mountain Brook – and helps his students analyze and understand data, though teaching is so much more than that.

“Your ultimate goal is for someone to acquire knowledge,” Major says. “It’s being able to think critically and make decisions – in my case, making those decisions based on data – but it’s also about personal growth.”

One of his favorite times of the year – though maybe also the most stressful – is at the end of the spring semester when students are gearing up for AP exams.

“I love AP Exam day,” he says. “It’s nerve-wracking because I view it as a sporting event. I bring a stereo and play ‘Thunderstruck,’ and we all walk in together. It’s that communal feeling of doing something together.”

His finance career plus his economics classes and internships definitely prepared him for the subject matter, including his first-ever experience with data analytics through a research project with DeeDee Barnes Bruns when she was BSC’s vice president for enrollment management. Major says that the other crucial part of teaching is thinking independently and encouraging students to do the same, and that was an important part of what he learned at BSC, even though he never had an education track.

“The beauty of the liberal arts education is that you take so many different types of classes, learn how to think critically, and be open to something new,” Major says. “’Southern helped foster the diversity of knowledge and put me in a community where it’s encouraged to meet different people. The heart of teaching is to know people at an individual level. If I can know what you need, I can set you up for you to learn.”

This story was included in a special education edition of From the Hilltop, Birmingham-Southern’s alumni email newsletter.

You can email [email protected] to get in touch with the Office of Alumni Engagement, learn about upcoming opportunities and events, and tell us more about you.