The math department at Spokane Falls Community College offers students a wide range of learning through Professors like Rosemary Evans that take pride in the curriculum and student success.
Rose Evans is a math professor at SFCC and according to her, math wasn’t her strongest skill as a kid.
“I used to hate math when I was younger,” Evans said. “I just thought I was so bad at it. I think it was kind of something that was almost conditioned in my childhood. I was homeschooled, and often my parents would just give me things and say ‘learn, just teach yourself’, and so math wasn’t a very formal part of my upbringing.”
Throughout high school Evans still struggled. She shared about a pivotal moment where her perspective changed on the subject.
“When I was in high school I had to take algebra and I took it with a teacher. He really believed in me and he said, ‘you can do this,’” Evans said. “I remember I would be in tears. I’d be so upset about my homework because I just didn’t understand what I was doing. He said, ‘Rose, you’ve got this’. I think that made a big difference, having somebody that believed in me. I want to do that for other people. That’s when l first got math curious.”
That perspective gain continued further on in her life particularly in the start of her college career. This allowed her to determine that she enjoyed math more than she could’ve imagined.
“I did Running Start at Spokane Community College and I took another math class and my teacher was just incredible,” Evans said. “She was just so organized, so easy to understand and I realized math is not complicated. It’s supposed to be straightforward and when it’s done right, it is. That’s when it settled into my heart that I love this subject, I love talking about it, I love spending my time doing it.”
Before her professional career at SFCC, Evans has had plenty of prior experiences with college education. Her first stops were at SCC and SFCC and continued further.
“I went to EWU, that’s where I got my secondary education in math for high school and then my masters in applied mathematics too,” said Evans. “ I got hired as a tutor for that community college, SCC, and I got to actually spend several hours a day just doing math.”
Her prior experiences at SFCC have led her to come back and teach. Evans highlights the Spokane Colleges mission that she loves.
“I love the Community Colleges of Spokane and it’s been my dream job to come back and specifically teach for these colleges,” she said. “I love the Spokane area and I love the mission here at these particular colleges, so absolutely.”
Evans has a strong message to those deciding whether or not SFCC is the right place for them and the message is big on community.
“There’s a great community here,” she said. “I love all the things that the Student Union building is doing. If you’re the type of person that wants to be involved and likes to have extracurricular options, that’s a huge plus for SFCC. I love how welcoming the environment is because everybody is so kind and diversity is really seen here. It’s a very creative campus with the arts and just the way students express themselves with their outfits, everybody’s got a strong sense of identity here as individuals.”
