After I finished up my Masters degree at UMKC in December 2008, the following spring and summer of 2009 I taught a range of Math courses at UMKC and Maplewoods Community College, and I taught one math class at Park University in the spring.
The following school year of 2009, my daughter and I moved to Manila in the Philippines for two years to be Christian missionaries. The first year I was there, I volunteered at an orphanage and taught math to grades 1 through 5 for the orphans and the impoverished community surrounding the orphanage. This school was a free private school for the poorest of the poor in the community.
While teaching at the school, I noticed the lack of knowledge for good hygiene. So, besides teaching math to these children, I taught the kids how to brush and floss their teeth and put on deodorant. I also helped the children clean their boils and skin sores and sometimes rat bites.
Towards the end of the first year in Manila, I met a Filipina dentist who agreed to clean my school kid's and orphan's teeth for free. Therefore, I began taking kids to the dentist weekly.
The second year I lived in the Philippines, I didn't teach at the private school for the impoverished community, but committed to taking kids to the dentist. I also volunteered at my daughters school, Faith Academy. This is an international school for children of missionaries and business kids overseas. I taught a P.E. class for senior girls and substituted for math classes often, such as Calculus I, and Algebra I & II. I met my husband in the Philippines and we were married in June 2010.
We returned to the United States in June of 2011. Since being home, I am teaching four Mathematics classes at Maplewoods Community College. I have had great feedback from my students about my classes and my teaching style. This credit I owe to my professors at UMKC who pushed me to do my best as a student and instructor by encouraging me with helpful and useful critiquing. It is because of them that I am the instructor I am today. Along with teaching at Maplewoods, I am volunteering in the Math Lab at Maplewoods and giving my students a study session four days a week before class. I am happy to be using my skills I learned from being involved in the SI and VSI program at UMKC.
[30 June 2014, when asked by the School of Graduate Studies to describe her graduate experience at UMKC]
My favorite place on campus was my office. My office was close to all of my professor's offices and it seemed like we had our own little community. My office mate Samantha (Sam) McCaffrey, formerly Samantha Reynolds, and I spent countless hours studying and working in our office. It was our home away from home. We joked several times that we should keep cots and sleeping bags in our office and stay the night since we would be leaving campus so late at night and returning bright and early the next day. Our professors often stayed on campus late as well and we would order pizza and have it delivered right to our office. I miss Sam and my professors the most from UMKC. I consider them family and think about them just about every day. Graduation day was such a wonderful, long awaited day, but also a sad day knowing everything would change.
[17 March 2015]
I was just offered and accepted a full-time tenure track faculty position as a math instructor at Maple Woods Community College!
[While at UMKC, Carol taught for us Math 110 College Algebra, Math 125 Trigonometry, Math 206 Brief Calculus & Matrix Algebra, and Math 210 Calculus I. In addition, over the 2005-2006 academic year, Carol was a facilitor for both UMKC video courses VSI College Algebra and VSI Calculus I, working as the in-class instructor. Previously, she was a UMKC SI (Supplemental Instruction) tutor for two courses for a year, worked at the UMKC Math Resource Center, as well as the Academic Achievement Center Math Lab for Maple Woods Community College. On Nov. 19, 2004, Carol gave a talk in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics Expository Talks Series, titled: "A Proof of Darboux's Theorem: Every Derivative has the Intermediate Value Property." On Sept. 19, 2007, she was recognized at the Student Affairs Convocation as a graduate Student Award Winner, an award for "students who have persevered through difficulty while pursuing their academic goals".]
Carol Cordova (formerly Hanson)