Student Stories

Michael Lopez

Michael Lopez, COCC graduate and math professor at Linn-Benton Community College. Photo courtesy of Oregon State University.
Photo courtesy of Oregon State University

COCC graduate, Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer degree
Math professor, Linn-Benton Community College

Michael Lopez always knew math was his favorite subject in school — at COCC, he began to see it as a career.

"When I started my first year in college in spring of 2012, I knew that I wanted to major in math," says the former U.S. Marine. It became more of a passion at COCC, he shares. Encouraged by his instructors, he even formed a math club. "Our main goal was to foster an appreciation of mathematics in the community," he says. The club held events and presentations to explore creative aspects of math.

Lopez started tutoring mathematics at COCC in the Tutoring Center, helping solidify his plans to become a teacher. "I really enjoyed the opportunity to not only teach others how I thought about questions, but to learn how others think about those same questions as well."

"It is with great pleasure that I can say that the entire Math department, faculty and staff, is one of the best math departments out there."

After COCC, Lopez earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Oregon State University, and today is a math professor at Linn-Benton Community College. He looks fondly back at his COCC start: "It is with great pleasure that I can say that the entire Math department, faculty and staff, is one of the best math departments out there."

Patty Hammer

Patty Hammer, COCC graduate and math faculty

COCC graduate, Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer degree
Math faculty, COCC

"I have always had a love-hate relationship with math," Patty Hammer admits. "My father was a math teacher, and I used to help him grade papers, so you might say it's in my genes." But she bolted from math after that. Her dyslexia, she thinks, was the culprit.

Undiagnosed until she was 36, Hammer says the disorder overwhelmed her affinity for numbers and puzzles. She instead entered the printing profession, where working with press negatives always made sense to her back-to-front perspective. But a few factors, including the sense that she had "settled for what was safe," eventually prodded her to begin taking classes at COCC.

"I have always had a love-hate relationship with math."

Along the way, Hammer's instructors observed she was good at explaining math to her classmates. So they began to involve her in departmental things, like setting up the lab for online students and helping with the Math Contest. It encouraged her to overcome her obstacles. "All of them were involved in pushing me in a direction that I would not admit I was passionate about, but really loved to do," she says.

A graduate of 2005 — the culmination of nine years of tenacious commitment to earn her associate degree — she later earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Oregon and returned to COCC to teach, currently as an adjunct instructor.

Andrew Jensen

Andrew Jensen, COCC graduate and founder of Cascade Tutoring Center. Photo courtesy of The Bulletin.
Photo courtesy of Oregon State University

COCC graduate, Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer degree
Founder/owner, Cascade Tutoring Center

Andrew Jensen thinks the whole "math person" thing is a myth. And he should know. "Ironically enough, before going to COCC, I really struggled," shares the former student, who now operates a tutoring business. "Math never really 'clicked.'"

But at COCC, something undeniably did. First, while pursuing Exercise Science studies, and later, going after a Biology major, Jensen discovered in his required math classes that the subject took on new life. It was more about the "why," he explains, and the thinking behind the mathematics than the memorizing of content.

"Math never really 'clicked.'"

After confronting his college nemesis — calculus — and earning perfect marks, Jensen realized that while he'd never imagined himself as a math person, the material was illuminated in a new way, made more relevant. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology at Oregon State University in 2015, followed by a teaching degree, and took his keen interest in math to the head of the class. He taught math at Madras High School and science at a Utah middle school before founding his own tutoring business, Cascade Tutoring Center, in Bend.