Andie Grasmick Nye wasn't always a numbers person. She had always gravitated toward social studies and English classes in high school.

But then she took pre-calculus - and loved it. Then she took calculus - and loved it, too. When she arrived at the University of Kansas, this love of math became a major. But she knew that she wanted to influence young people in the way she had been influenced by her math teachers at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo.

"I wanted to work with people, and I wanted a career that outlives myself," said Nye.

On May 17, Nye will walk down the Hill as the first graduate of the UKanTeach program, a collaboration between KU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and School of Education that leads to a degree in science or math as well as a teaching license in four years.

Katie was one of the outstanding participants in the UTeach program, which enables students to gain a teaching certificate while earning a bachelor’s degree in math and science. She says she was surrounded in UTeach by “women who were really good at math and science.”

When Jesse De La Huerta started school in Brownsville, a border city on the southernmost tip of Texas, he did not speak English. He began his pre-kindergarten class as an English as Second Language student. But by his kindergarten year, his mother put him in all English classes. “She felt it was ‘sink or swim’ and wanted me to become full English speaking as quickly as possible rather than get stuck in the ESL classes,” he recalls now. “And she was right.”