Inside Addition with Professor Kristin Ross
On the second floor of Santa Monica College’s new Math and Science Building, there’s a professor in the department who’s cultivating a safe space for her students one math equation at a time. Meet Professor Kristin Ross. She’s a graduate of California State University, Long Beach, and has been a math professor at SMC for 12 years.
In college, Ross was originally a business major and ended up in math.
Money was definitely on the brain for Ross, and she found a lucrative way to make it. “I started tutoring, and I was making way more money than what I was making at Target. I wanted to acquire a liquor license and open up clubs,” Ross said. Math wasn’t a love-at-first-sight subject for Ross, but she found a way to provide help for those who needed it.
Her business calculus class is where she met her clientele, and they’d ask if she tutored Calculus 1 or 2 and she told them yes, knowing she had never taken those classes before. As far as teaching goes, Ross described teaching college students as being more on the difficult side. She said, “It's challenging in the sense of one’s life experiences, so I strive to make my lessons culturally relevant.” By doing this, she could connect with her students regardless of age or race.
The only full-time Black woman in the math department, her identity helps shape how she connects to her students.
Math to Ross is how her body is treated at the gym. She said, “The math is the gym for your mind, and it forces your brain to work out in a way that you're not used to.”
Thomas Johnson, a sophomore, described Ross and her class as “welcoming and very warm.” Ayden Aryeh, a freshman, said Professor Ross “does a really good job at motivating you to do the work.” Both students agreed that they could see themselves passing the class.
Johnson also shared that Ross “pushes us to get through so she can see us win.” Aryeh said, “I think her teaching style makes it difficult to fail. She offers the resources to pass, and she gives you a lot of opportunities to come to her for support.” Yaritza Vazquez is a freshman who also has ADHD. She shared that Professor Ross “didn’t make her feel like anything” by needing accommodations and described the class as “user-friendly.”
As a Black woman, connecting with her students from marginalized backgrounds provides a sense of community in the classroom. Ross shared, “On the first day of class I say, ‘I am unapologetically very Black up in here.’” She also described the role of professor as “a hat she wears” as she shows up as herself in the classroom.
By being authentic with her students in this way, she strives for her Black students to be authentically themselves, too. Ross looks out for the women in her class as well. Since the STEM field can be majority male, she said she encourages the women in her class to be confident in their work.
“I create a space for the marginalized,” Ross said. “And I want the women to show up. I want them to teach.”
Professor Ross shared that she will be continuing her studies at UCLA this fall, pursuing her doctorate through UCLA’s Educational Leadership Program. She wants to get down to the bottom of why math course policies are so rigid in nature. “I’m ready to take on that challenge of answering the why, and where it comes from.” Her students give her the motivation, and now she’s deconstructing those policies one class at a time.