Editor’s Note: The author of this article is an advisee of Professor Kim Ruane.
Professor Kim Ruane has been working at Tufts for the past 24 years and is the chair of the Department of Mathematics. While she has done extensive work as a professor and researcher at Tufts thus far, some of her greatest accomplishments have come from outside of the classroom.
For Ruane, the road to Tufts was not an easy one. She feels she holds a unique place in academia. “I’m [was] first gen student, so I would say that it’s a little bit unusual that I'm sitting here.”
Ruane was able to ascend to such a high level in academics due to her skill in mathematics. In high school, she moved through classes so quickly that she had to go against the grain to get ahead.
“The system wants to keep everybody at the same pace,” Ruane said, “so I had to fight the system a little bit.”
Ruane attended a commuter school in Georgia with a developing math department.
“When I went to Kennesaw State College — now Kennesaw State University — they took me under their wing,” she said. “They let me take whatever courses I wanted to take. I didn’t ever pay for a course.”
Later on, in a PhD program at Florida State University, Ruane had a great connection with her advisor. “He treated me more like an equal … because we were both learning the subject and that resonated with me,” she said. “[I thought] of it less hierarchical, whereas I think academics can be very hierarchical. … So that shaped the way I think about teaching and mentoring.”
After receiving her PhD from Florida State, Ruane searched for an academic institution to build her career, eventually settling at Tufts.
“The reason I chose Tufts is because they offered a balance of research and teaching that other places … didn’t offer.”
Today, Ruane said she works in the research community “equally as a mentor and as a researcher, whereas when [I was] younger, it had to be 100% research.”
Ruane’s research focus is called Geometric Group Theory. Ruane likened her research to playing a game of 20 Questions — except the answer is a geometric object. “What is the shortest list of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions that you could write down for a geometric object that uniquely [specifies] it? … That’s a good way to think about the way in which I work.”
Ruane spoke of her love of working on research with PhD students. “I like the act of watching them discover and work on an unsolved problem. … I love that at some point they become more knowledgeable on their problem than you.”
This knack for mentorship has carried over into Ruane’s teaching. “I’ve always found a way to work in my interest in pedagogy and teaching in different ways,” she said.
Ruane’s favorite course to teach is called Bridge to Higher Mathematics, which is a transition course from computational mathematics to written proofs. “You can see light bulbs come on for the students. You see frustration, you see struggle, but you also see real reward in that class,” she said.
Ruane also discussed what she has learned from teaching an unconventional online calculus course during the summers.
“I realized with an online class … you can’t lecture on Zoom,” Ruane said. “So I made a whole set of videos for the class. Now it didn’t mean that was the way they learned calculus. … When you’re with me, we’re going to be actively learning. I’m going to ask questions, I’m going to give problems, you’re going to work in a group. … Feedback is incredibly important, not just grades, actual feedback.”
She added an element of oral exams into her class, which is unique in mathematics.
Ruane expressed how these exams give her a better understanding of how her students think.
This led Ruane to discuss the ways in which grades have influence over academics today. “There is a pressure within the system of like, ‘Oh, this is a requirement and I just need to get through it.’ And I feel that the pressure on students is unreasonable,” Ruane said.
Ruane recalls that a Kennesaw professor told her “‘If you just think about the learning, the grades are not going to be a problem.’ And he was 100% right,” Ruane said. “It’s harder in today’s atmosphere to make students believe that because of the system.”
In addition to her teaching and research, Ruane is in her sixth year as chair of the math department.
Ruane’s chairmanship started off with a hitch. “I was about six months into it when the pandemic hit,” Ruane said. “Of the five years, three of those were spent in crisis management, just finding [the] way in the dark. Our department changed a lot, pre-pandemic versus post.”
Besides dealing with pandemic issues, Ruane has tried to shake things up in the math department. “One of the things I’ve done as chair is get together with other chairs, but there isn’t really a system for doing that,” she said.
Ruane also schedules classes for the thousands of students taking math every semester. “We are the hub of all of the math that all the different disciplines need,” she said.
“It used to be that nobody talked to each other, like physics would put their request in, I would put my request in and it would be like ‘Oh, we didn’t even think about the fact that they might conflict,’” she said. But with support from Samuel Thomas, the dean of academic affairs, and the registrar’s office, Ruane has come up with a better system for organizing foundational classes, she wrote in an email to the Daily.
“You have to be in charge of things like trying to hire new people. You do outreach for students and faculty and the community,” she explained. “You are the face of the department. … You’re also a conduit of information from up the hill to your department.”
On top of all of this, Ruane is constantly having to put out fires. “There’s just the everyday emergencies; … that is what takes up the most time,” Ruane said.
After taking on such responsibilities for years, Ruane is set to finish her term as chair this year.
Speaking on her teaching aspirations moving forward, Ruane spoke about wanting to create a safe space where students feel okay not knowing everything. “I can see that there’s a fear about exposing your lack of knowledge when really that's the opposite of what should be happening in a classroom.”
