Where Do We Go From Here? Interview with Dr. Tim Trenary

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.”

First Highlander Print Issue in Over Four Years

By Morgan Jacobus, Editor in Chief

Cover of the End of Year Showcase Issue 2020-21

Great news: we created and published a PRINT ISSUE!

When I stepped into my role as EIC, this was one of my main goals. As I talked with our adviser and various faculty, they all communicated in some way that they missed having a print issue of the Highlander. After all, there hasn’t been one since December of 2016, over four years ago. Looking into the Highlander archives, I read their final print issue. From what I gathered, it appeared that their decision stemmed from a feeling that people weren’t reading print anymore. Ironically to me, our goals are actually the same. In the article announcing the transition to digital, it mentioned, “Our biggest goal this academic year for The Highlander was visibility; we want to be seen and heard by all of campus,” wrote their Lead Associate Editor at the time, Natalia Zreliak.

After all, what more does a publication want than to be seen? However, there is one main way in which we deviate: I see print as a way to increase visibility rather than a hindrance to it. Though I appreciate the prominence and necessity of an online presence, I think there is something about print that just can’t be replicated online. You can see people carrying it, you can find it across campus, and for those of us that created it, we get to hold our work in our hands.

We will still be a primarily online publication, but our goal is to have special print issues that come out about once a semester, to have the best of both worlds. The way I see it, there isn’t a need to have to choose between print and online, we can do both, and in doing so we will hopefully increase our presence and recognizability on campus.

We conducted the first distribution of our first ever print End of Year Issue, celebrating the work we have done thus far in the 2020-21 academic year. Did you miss it? No worries! We will have plenty of copies that can be found in the major buildings across campus, such as the library, the fitness and wellness Center, Clarke Hall, Main Hall, Claver, and even in the science building. Or, in other exciting news, we also made an Issuu account, so you can read our print issue in all its glory online, just go to this link: Highlander End of Year Issue 2020-21 by ruhighlander - issuu

Stay tuned to see what print issue we are going to do next!