Cathy brought important and relevant experience to our department when she arrived, having taught mathematics for several years at the Lapel School in Indiana before coming to GVSU. This experience was reflected in much of her work, focusing on pre-calculus classes. During her career, Cathy served as course coordinator for most of our foundational level courses, including Elementary Algebra (MTH 097), College Algebra (MTH 122), Trigonometry (MTH 123), and Survey of Calculus (MTH 125). Perhaps Cathy's biggest contribution was to Algebra (MTH 110). MTH 110 was a vitally important course in our curriculum because it was the university's basic skills mathematics requirement, and so was a course that every student at GVSU had to complete. Cathy was the MTH 110 course coordinator for many years. As part of her duties in this role, Cathy conducted class visits of courses taught by faculty new to the course. Since many sections of MTH 110 were taught by part-time faculty, these visits helped a great deal in the development of faculty in their role as teachers, and to ensure quality education in the course. Cathy was also a driving force behind a re-imaging of MTH 110, from a mathematical skills class to more of an applications-oriented course with an emphasis on modeling real world data using appropriate technology. The goal was to use resources to help students learn and to make the course more relevant to them. This was especially important because many of our students were nontraditional students. These ideas have had staying power, as most of them are still present in MTH 110 today.

In addition to her role as course coordinator, Cathy also contributed to the department in important ways, one of which was serving on the Departmental Advisory Committee for several years.