Meet…
Kinga Oliver, an assistant professor in the Mathematics department who is from Poland.
Why she’s
interesting…
In Poland, she received her masters degree in Mathematics and in the Teaching of Mathematics.
Oliver said these degrees are completely different than the United States, because you are not qualified to teach a college level math class unless you have a masters in the subject you wish to teach. So in turn she earned both degrees.
Growing up, however, Oliver wanted to be involved with music, and said she went to a parallel school for music education, in addition to her normal schooling, starting at the age of seven.
“I did the music school for 10 years,” she said. “Mandolin for six years and guitar for four years.”
At that time in her life, she was considering majoring in music, but decided against it. It was then that she started to see how her interest in math was beneficial.
“I’ve always liked math, and my friends at school started asking me to help them,” she said. “I thought then — maybe that’s what I should do.”
Oliver came to the United States in 2002 after getting her masters degree, because of the unemployment rate in Poland at the time.
“I decided I was going to come to an English speaking country, learn English and then come back and teach math in a private school,” she said. “They have high pay in private schools, so that was my goal.”
She was soon to find out that she would not return to Poland like she had hoped.
After coming to the United States, she stayed with a family who enabled her to come to Sinclair Community College and take English as a Second Language and English Composition classes. In her English composition class, she wrote a cover letter as one of her assignments addressed to Sinclair on how she wanted to become a math teacher on campus.
“Just two years later, I became a math teacher at Sinclair,” she said.
Within her first week in the United States, her host mom scheduled her to go on three different blind dates, where she ended up meeting her husband.
Even then, she thought she would not stay in the United States, until her host mom encouraged her to get her Ph.D in Mathematics at the University of Cincinnati.
“I decided I didn’t want to do that and started teaching at UC,” she said. “Then at one point, I was teaching at both Sinclair and UC.”
Oliver said she loves teaching at Sinclair because of the people she is surrounded by every day, because they are focused on students and how they can succeed.
“Here, people are totally different and when I took the ESL classes I noticed that,” she said. “Here, it’s amazing what all the teachers are doing to focus and help students — that’s why we are nationally recognized.”
Oliver said no matter what her obligations are after class, she puts them aside when she steps into the classroom to teach.
“I focus on the student — that’s my job, that’s what I love,” she said. “I’m passionate about teaching, without passion what can you do? You would be stuck.”