Math Instructor Cindy Clements Named Trinidad Campus "Faculty of the Year"
Cindy Clements, Professor of Mathematics, has been named TSJC Faculty of the Year. Commenting on the honor, TSJC President Felix Lopez said, “On behalf of the entire TSJC family, I offer congratulations to a very talented and deserving individual for being selected by her peers for her accomplishments in the classroom.”
Clements will join other outstanding faculty from the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) for an award ceremony and luncheon at the Community College of Aurora on February 9.
Clements discovered that she liked teaching early on, while teaching water sports at Girl Scout camp. “Math was my favorite subject so I went with that,” she said. She attended California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) where she graduated summa cum laude. In college she heard contradictory messages about the value of teaching, “My undergraduate professors were always complaining that there weren’t any good math teachers out there that really loved it, so I wanted to change that. I loved the subject and wanted to make a difference to students,” she said.
She attended graduate school at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK, on a full-ride scholarship that she earned by scoring 18 points on the prestigious Putnam math exam. At OSU she earned a master of science in mathematics, graduating summa cum laude. “My professors there wanted me to go into research and discouraged the teaching idea. They said I’d be wasting my brain, but I didn’t think that was true, and teaching called me,” Clements said.
The most rewarding aspects of her work are “making a difference in someone’s life,” and “when a student gets “it” and starts understanding and liking the subject,” she said. To accomplish that, Clements says she needs to know the subject “cold” and have the ability to learn, adapt, and be able to teach in many different ways. She also has to be a good listener and communicator.
She said that she is always looking for ways to improve her teaching, and she stays interested and motivated by learning new things like robotics, or new software and “hands-on stuff” that she can incorporate into her classroom.
Last year Clements became the instructor and faculty sponsor of TSJC’s NASA Robotics Team. TSJC’s team, the only 2-year college in the Colorado competition, designed, built, and successfully competed with 4-year colleges on a course simulating conditions on Mars. To prepare for that, Clements said, “Designing, inventing, learning new languages for robotics, learning electronics, tracking down parts for robotics, working with the students to build the robot, trouble-shooting electronic and/or programming problems pretty much took up every moment last spring.” Clements is now busily working with this year’s team on their top-secret robot design.
Clements has been teaching for more than 30 years and has been at TSJC since 2006. She also works as a freelance mathematics editor, author, and contributing writer. Other awards she has received include the Coca Cola Teaching Award, Educator of Distinction, and the Oklahoma Governor’s Commendation for Outstanding Teaching.
