By Carly Compesi, Staff Writer
I sat down with Dr. Tim Trenary, a professor from the math department, to talk about the journey that brought him to Regis University. What I originally assumed would be a math-heavy interview soon became a conversation about everything from magic and love to Zen and indigenous flute-making.
“I always assumed I’d go to college because I wanted to be a scientist,” Trenary began, detailing his childhood in Southern Illinois. “I spent a lot of time digging into science—trying to separate hydrogen from water in my mom’s washroom, building lasers, and things like that. Never anything successful, but I was trying.”
Trenary’s scientific outlook shifted after he took calculus in junior college. “That really resonated with me—all of a sudden I’m doing this thing and I really liked it,” Trenary explained. “I was also really into ritual magic...and math looked like magical writing to me. The script is so beautiful and arcane, and there’s so much meaning held in it, right? So writing math was something I really loved.”
From there, Trenary pursued mathematics at the University of Illinois. In his family, this move was a big deal. “We were a really close family,” Trenary said. “There were, like, five of us including extended family, and I grew up in a single parent home. My father left when I was really young. So it was a big deal when I went away. It was a three and a half hour drive, but I would still come home every weekend. Slowly pulled away, and every step away was an emotional mess in the family.”
Being away from his family wasn’t the only challenge while Trenary attended the University of Illinois. “Math was different than calculus,” Trenary said. “I didn’t know what was going on in my math classes. I loved them, but I didn’t know what was happening. I was really bad at math, and the only class I got an A in was a class in Zen Buddhism. Then, I took a probability class, and halfway through it, I was, ‘Maybe I should talk to the professor.’ And I had never done that before. We talked, and all of a sudden, all these things started coming together and I figured out how to do these things and I swooped out of a dive right at the end.”
“That experience of being a terrible student is something I still bring with me,” Trenary continued. “Because I can see it in some of my students, too. I see a student who is amazing and so together—people who are actually doing the studying and the work and turning things in. I’m always amazed by my students who have everything together. It’s like, ‘How do you have it together at your age?’ I can’t even imagine. I felt like I didn’t have it together until I was 45. But I think I also understand my other students—I usually click with [them], and with my students who are just struggling, because I get it. I get how you can be lost. I think it helps me help them find their way back, because I found my way back, and I really had to bushwhack to get to clarity.”
Trenary moved yet again when he began his Master’s degree at Purdue University, which was also not as successful as he’d hoped. At Purdue, he met the woman who would eventually bring him out to Colorado for his Ph. D. While the relationship didn’t end well, he did enjoy his time at Colorado State University, where he met another partner during his final year. Since Trenary was farther along in his program than her, he decided to pursue Masters in statistics at CSU. This was cut short when Trenary was offered a position with IBM in Boulder.
IBM, too, was short-lived. Trenary worked there for about seven years working on image processing software in their printing division. When the financial crash began, he ended up in a software development position that he described as “soul crushing.” By the end, he said he was only there for a paycheck. “I hated working at IBM,” laughed Trenary. “And they didn’t like me all that much, either. I’m not a corporate guy. I ended up finding my way back to [teaching]. I just wanted to study math. I just loved math and [teaching] was a vehicle for that.”
This love was what brought Trenary to Regis University. With IBM and his personal life falling apart, Trenary realized he needed a change. While at Regis University, Trenary has met students he loves, found himself in a new relationship, and been given the opportunity to teach Zen Buddhism—an interest sparked by the course he adored during his undergrad and rekindled over the past four years.
“I was like, ‘I gotta find something that I can love,’” Trenary said. “And as soon as I set foot on campus, it felt like love. Honestly, it feels like most things I do come down to love. How can you go wrong with that, right? If you’re loving it, then that’s the right thing to do. Why would you do anything other than what you love? It hasn’t always led to immediate happiness, but it’s why I’m where I’m at today. I’m married to an amazing person that I respect and love—my life is just blessed.”
His advice to our newest graduates continues this logic. “Knowing what your heart is can be a difficult thing,” admitted Trenary. “But I’ll find students, and they’re clearly miserable in college, and I feel terrible because you’re expected to go to college, right? And in some ways, statistically, you’ll have a better income—maybe. And I just think, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you doing this to yourself?’ And more often, I have math majors who either aren’t terribly good at math—which is okay, I wasn’t great at math—or they just don’t like it, and I’m like, ‘Why are you doing math?’ There’s no reason to do math if you don’t like math.”
Ultimately, Trenanry believes in tuning out the beliefs of others in favor of whatever one truly enjoys. “Following your heart,” Trenary said. “There’s just nothing else worth doing in this little blip of a life we have.”
