Moya Mazarow

Professor

“I get upset if I hear women say they can’t do math. Being a man or a woman has nothing to do with it.”

“We had a wonderful winter session with a great group of students who just made the winter fly by!” says Moya Mazarow. “And this year I’m teaching three classes in calculus, math for business majors and intermediate algebra. And I’m having a lot of fun.”

Fun and math might seem antithetical to many. But with the energy Moya brings to her classes, students quickly forget their math dread. “Right now I’m new and I’m super-energetic,” says Moya. “I’m always helping my students outside the classroom and I don’t think they quite believe me when, on the first day, I give them all my home phone number and tell them to call me if the need me.” Moya’s classes are indeed very much a group effort.

“Did you ever have one of those professors who read out of a notebook to you?” she asks. “Well. I don’t do that. I like to work together with students on examples, get them involved. In fact, half the time I can’t solve some of the problems I put on the board. And the last time my students made up a problem for me on the board,” she says with a mischievous laugh, “it was so awful that we all ended up laughing hysterically.”

After taking her PhD at CalTech (“where they really raved about SMC”) Moya reports that teaching at SMC was her best option. “I don’t enjoy research but I do enjoy people,” she says. “And though there’s a lot of pressure in the math department to cover all the material, when students come to us they’re getting taught everything that’s required. We’re all working really hard to keep up the standards.”

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