When Andy Ylitalio was asked to invite a former teacher to a prestigious awards ceremony honoring top engineering graduates at Stanford University, he knew immediately who that teacher would be.
Cathy Gunvalson, his Math League coach and favorite teacher at Stillwater Area High School, got the invite.
“Mrs. G. would sit there, and she would explain every single problem — step by step — in a way that no matter how hard the math was, every single person would understand,” Ylitalio said. “She’d start from Square 1 or Square Negative 100, whichever one you needed to understand.”
Gunvalson retires Wednesday after 41 years of teaching AP calculus and pre-calculus at the high school.
“Cathy is a gem,” said Principal Rob Bach. “She is one of the most caring individuals you would ever want to meet.”
“Math can be kind of stark — there are right answers and wrong answers; so that sense of comfort and safety really resonates with kids,” Bach said. “They like knowing that they have someone who genuinely cares about them as people.”
Gunvalson, known to students as “Mrs. G.,” comes in early and stays late to tutor students who need extra help. She keeps a huge bowl of mint Life Savers at the entrance to her classroom. She has students compose rap songs or write poems using math terms. She tells cheesy math jokes.
“She makes it really fun,” said Jack Lange, 17, of Stillwater. “I always find myself laughing when I’m in her class.”
Added Bryce Welsch, 17, of Stillwater: “I think (calculus) can be kind of unintuitive at first, but she makes it easier to understand.”
Here’s how Gunvalson teaches the squeeze theorem regarding the limit of a function:
“I have two Vikings players on either side of me, and one of them says: ‘I’m going to McDonald’s for lunch,’” Gunvalson said. “And the other one says, ‘Well, I’m going to McDonald’s for lunch too,’ so then I would automatically have to go to McDonald’s for lunch because I have been squeezed in between two known entities.”
During a recent AP calculus class, Gunvalson, dressed in a black T-shirt that said “Calc Rocks,” chatted with her students as she solved problems on the electronic whiteboard at the front of the room.
“One down and three to go,” she said. “And only one of them is kind of a pain.”
“Some of you like to cook. It’s the preparation that takes the longest.”
“Can anybody think how this is like a revolving door? You’re going to be stuck in this forever.”
LIFELONG LOVE FOR MATH
Gunvalson, 64, of Woodbury, grew up in Bemidji and went to Bemidji State University, graduating in 1975 with a degree in math education.
“I’ve always liked math,” she said. “It probably started when I was in junior high. Algebra was easy for me. I liked it then, and I still do.”
Growing up during the chaos of the Vietnam War, Gunvalson said the order of mathematics was appealing.
“You know how idealistic you are in high school and how you wish you could solve all the problems in the world?” she said. “Math was one place that I had control over. I didn’t have control over the boys in my hometown who were dying in Vietnam, but math was one little part of the world where there was an answer.”
A urinating rat helped seal the deal.
Gunvalson initially planned to major in child psychology, but she changed her mind during an experimental psychology class her sophomore year.
“We had this little rat and you put it in a box, and if he would sniff and get close to a bar, you’d release a pellet of food,” she said. “You would reinforce him every time he got closer, so he could learn how to do it himself.”
One day, the rat urinated all over Gunvalson.
“I went to my next class, and it was math, and the head of the department came in and said: ‘Everybody in this room has to declare their major today,’ and I switched,” she said. “Maybe it was just meant to be, but I was just really ticked at that rat.”
Gunvalson taught at Apollo High School in St. Cloud for a year before moving to Stillwater Area High School in 1976.
“I could never see myself doing anything but teaching,” she said. “I feel like it was my calling. I’ve worked with between 5,000 and 6,000 students, and that’s just neat.”
Teaching calculus is especially fun, she said, because “we use everything they have learned before, but it’s all brand-new topics.”
“So I’m the lucky duck of all the math teachers,” she said. “Everybody else has kind of done the grunt work, and I get to do the crowning glory. I think that’s where it’s fun.”
TRIP TO STANFORD
Gunvalson, who is married and has two grown daughters, is planning a post-retirement trip to Europe. She is also looking forward to having more time to read mysteries, walk and ride her bike.
Being invited to the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Scholastic Award ceremony at Stanford last month — on an all-expenses-paid trip — was a terrific capstone to her teaching career, she said.
“Andy is the most humble of all the students I have ever worked with,” Gunvalson said.
The award is presented to the top 5 percent of the senior undergraduate engineering class. Recipients can invite a teacher, from pre-college days, who had the most influence on their academic career.
Ylitalio, who will graduate June 18 with a degree in engineering physics, said Gunvalson taught him the importance of communicating his thought processes and considering the approaches of his peers.
“Those lessons have helped me form strong study groups at Stanford, which have been the source of both my greatest learning and my greatest friendships,” said Ylitalio, who will enter the Ph.D. program in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology this fall.
Ylitalio said he will always be grateful for Gunvalson’s warm welcome when he joined the Math League as a ninth-grader.
“I had to take a bus over from Oak-Land (Junior High), and I showed up 20 minutes late to the first practice,” he said. “I figured I would turn around and try again the next week, but Mrs. G. said ‘Oh, you missed it, but we still want to let you know what happened today.’ So she sat me down and talked to me. ‘Who are you? Why do you like math? What do you like about math? What kind of math do you do?’ And we just worked through a few math problems. I think we kind of connected there.
“I felt like that was the right place for me,” he said. “I was pretty small at the time, and I was with all these big high-school seniors, but I thought that it would be fun to do because of Mrs. G.”