Her ideas about what she could pursue were already limited, and the subtle and not-so-subtle messages that others communicated about women in math-related fields were not encouraging. “I had an extremely high math SAT score, and no one said to me, ‘Hey, why don’t you consider engineering or architecture?’” As a first-generation college student, she said her world was narrow. Poinsett grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at a time when girls were expected to grow up to be a teacher, a nurse, a mom or a secretary, she said. “It’s a big shock,” she said of the honor, adding that winning the award might be the thing she is most proud of from her career, which spans 20 years teaching math at CSM, 40 years as a private math tutor and three years as a high school math teacher. Poinsett’s award was announced at the college’s spring commencement ceremony May 18 at the La Plata Campus. It is for these efforts that Poinsett was honored this year with the CSM Faculty Excellence Award, an annual award honoring one member of the college’s permanent faculty. “I want to make math great again,” she said. Her teaching style in the classroom is designed to help students of both sexes find math approachable. But her passion for math education doesn’t end with women’s inclusion. Poinsett has worked hard at CSM to change that inequity where women are concerned. Poinsett, a longtime math professor at the College of Southern Maryland (CSM), tells this story and others to illustrate the inequity she has seen and experienced in math education during her career. And I think we ended up getting some of the best grades.” “The two of us sat in the front row,” Poinsett said, smiling at the memory. Out of the more than 200 students in the course, there was only one other female student along with Poinsett. She stepped into her Calculus I classroom and was faced with a sea of men. Sandy Poinsett remembers taking her first math class at Indiana University in the late 1960s. Sandy Poinsett Noted for Women + STEM Advocacy, Individualized Classroom Work Sandy Poinsett
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