As graduation unfolds, students and faculty members alike will be saying farewell to City College, but not many can say farewell to a time spent at City College that has lasted 20 years.
Mathematics professor Dr. Lindsey Bramlet-Smith has been teaching math for 43 years, 20 of those years were spent here.
Prior to City College, Bramlet-Smith taught at University of South Colorado-Pueblo and Orange Coast College in Orange County.
She first moved to Santa Barbara to get her doctorate after she “realized that I couldn’t get promoted unless I had a doctorate.” She lived in the family-student housing on UCSB’s campus.
After receiving a doctorate in math from UCSB, she starting working at City College as a full time professor in 1995 and since then has never left.
“I stayed because my husband has a job here at Raytheon and this is where my family is…I just like math and teaching and I like teaching math,” she said.
Bramlet-Smith decided it was time to retire after a few years of arthritic pain in the thumb and shoulder of her right arm. “43 years is a lot of time teaching,” she said. “I have taught everything we (math department) offer.”
Mathematics professor Peter Georgakis said the department was really going to miss Bramlett-Smith. “She teaches all levels of math which is really hard to do, and a lot of it is in the higher levels of math… it is going to be hard to fill in those gaps.”
Not only will the department miss her teaching but according to Georgakis, they also miss her chocolates. “She always had an open-door policy when it came to chocolate, and that is a big thing,” he said. “You could always count on there being a big jar of peanut M&M’s, she is just a really sweet lady.”
Her plans for retirement consist of sleeping, cleaning up around her house and catching up on a lot of reading, “I hardly do any of that,” she said laughing. With her husband still to retire, Branlet-Smith said she plans to do “some independent travelling to Santa Cruz” where her daughter and grandkids live.
Professor Bramlet-Smith said what she will miss most of all is the interactions with the students.
“As much as I am ready to retire, I am going to miss it.”
Check out The Channels’ commencement coverage 2015:
From Peace Corps to professor—Spaventa retires after 23 years
