Kim Jenkins

Whether she’s teaching general education classes or Senior Seminar, Kimberly Jenkins wants her students to have a sense of wonder about their world, to always have questions that they are seeking to answer. Her favorite question is not “how” but “why.”

“I don’t care that you know how to calculate a confidence interval unless you also know where the interval came from and how to interpret it,” says Jenkins.

Further, “I expect my students to be able to explain themselves to me and to their fellow students. You don’t understand what you are studying unless you can explain it to someone else.”

Jenkins relishes the personal attention she can give her students in their quest for answers to all questions. “I love getting to know the students and seeing how proud they are of themselves when they accomplish things they didn’t feel they could. I love seeing how much the students mature and change in the four years we see them.”

She also enjoys teaching math in a liberal arts setting and watching math students go on to become doctors, teachers, psychologists, actuarial scientists, ministers, and more.

“At the foundation of mathematics is logic. Math can be applied to so many fields and seen in so many different areas. A liberal arts education allows students to use their quantitative reasoning skills in many areas. It also gives students insight into other ways of knowing beyond the scientific/quantitative reasoning methods.”