The daughter of an English mother and an Irish father, Bernadette Mullins grew up in Canada and the Midwest. She was a biology major at Western Illinois University – until she took a calculus class.

“The more mathematics I took, the more fascinated I was,” explains Mullins, known as Bernie to friends, family, and colleagues. “I loved the way mathematics is broadly useful in so many areas, so I decided to go to graduate school.”

As a teaching assistant at the University of Iowa while earning her PhD, Mullins says she “fell for commutative ring theory,” and found that love of mathematics grew even more as she found ways to make it come alive to students, especially those who struggle. “I like helping students understand that it’s not a race,” she says. “It’s not about doing things quickly or having the right answer … it’s about perseverance and understanding that if you work at it, you will get better. Perseverance is what mathematics is all about.”

In her 25 years as a math professor — five at Youngstown State University in Ohio and 20 on the Hilltop — Mullins has taught countless students about the power of perseverance. That lesson has been especially important over the last year. To encourage and inspire her students in calculus, mathematical modeling, statistics, and other challenging courses during the COVID-19 pandemic, she drew on stories of her mother’s experience as a child in England during World War II.

“I remember her telling me that story and saying, ‘You know, we would carry a gas mask to school,’ and I remember thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine,’” she says. “But when everything happened last year, I t said, we’re going to get through this. We’ll keep calm and carry on.”

Mullins credits her students and colleagues with finding ways to carry on. Even with a mix of in-person and virtual instruction – some live, some recorded — the sense of community reaffirmed that BSC has been the perfect place for her to spend her career.

“After working at Youngstown State for five years, I applied for hundreds of jobs, and I knew that I wanted to work at a liberal arts college,” Mullins says. “I’ve been at BSC for 20 years and I still feel like it’s the perfect home for me. My colleagues are scholars and lifelong learners who love teaching, and I really enjoy having students who are hardworking and care about learning.

“I love that at BSC, it’s not just about getting the job or having the best grades,” she adds. “It’s about the experience, and I get to help students have experiences that allow them to make sense of mathematics and understand it for themselves.”

Outside the classroom, she loves music, traveling, dark beer, cycling, hiking, movies, and “eating food that other people cook.”

This story was included in a special math and computer science edition of From the Hilltop, Birmingham-Southern’s alumni email newsletter.

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