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I was born in Walla
Walla, Washington and by
the time I was five I had lived in Colorado,
Kansas, and finally Oregon
where I lived year round until 2000.
For grades K-10 I
attended Tualatin Valley Junior Academy in Hillsboro,
OR where I was a member
of the track and field and basketball teams (small forward/point guard), band
(clarinet), choir (alto), and the Ring of Fire Handbell Choir. In 10th grade I went on a
mission trip to Guanaja,
Honduras
where I met the woman who helped discover the largest, most complete, best
preserved T. rex, Sue, and the deer living in her house.
At Auburn Adventist Academy in Auburn,
Washington, I completed
my last two years of high school. As a junior I was a member of the band,
choir, and basketball team. In the summer of 2006 I was diagnosed with an
autoimmune disease called Myasthenia Gravis
and was not able to participate in sports or play the clarinet during my final
year of high school. During my senior year I participated in choir and sang in
an all girls quartet, worked as the girls dorm tutor resident assistant, and
took pictures for the yearbook.
In 2002 I made my way
to the Midwest where I attended Andrews
University and majored in
Mathematics and minored in Religion and Physics. At Andrews I had the
opportunity to be involved with the math and physics clubs, several honors
societies, and undergraduate research both at Andrews and at the Grand Valley
State University REU in mathematics.
Graduating in 2006 I
trekked back across the United States,
stopping in Lincoln, Nebraska
to break down, to the southwest where I started my graduate studies in mathematics at The
University of Arizona in Tucson,
Arizona. While there, I
enjoyed residing there in the heat with my awesome cat Eta, running audio and
playing my guitar at my church,
watching thunderstorms and listening to the rain during monsoon season, riding
my road bike when it is dry, and, of course, studying and teaching mathematics.
In the summer of 2008
I successfully passed the mathematics qualifying exam
and received my M.S. in the Spring of 2009 in group theory. That summer I
adopted a new cat, Jack, and Eta lost some weight. I completed my Major and
Minor Comprehensive Exams in 20011 and am now a doctoral candidate, hoping to
finish my dissertation in the Spring of 2013. While I
finish my dissertation I have begun my work as Assistant Professor of
Mathematics in the Department of
Mathematics at Pacific Union College. My
research interests include algebra and mathematics education.