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“She is SO awesome!” stated
one user comment on the site.
“She knows her stuff and is excited
about chemistry which makes class
SO much fun!”
Another user posted that
Kuehnert is “Clear, tangible, patient,
sincere [and] concerned that
her students get it.”
Her score is no small achievement,
considering that Kuehnert
teaches notoriously difficult
Organic Chemistry.
In the classroom, she strides
back and forth across the front of
the room, sweeping arm gestures
mirroring her energetic tone as she
speaks, repeating statements when
she wants to drive a point home. A
half hour into the lecture, chemical
equations and diagrams cover her
whiteboard, overhead projector,
and Powerpoint slideshow.
Kuehnert’s energy level is just as
high in her office. While explaining
to a visitor who has never studied
the subject that Organic Chemistry
is carbon-based chemistry, which
is the most directly applicable to
living systems, she couldn’t abide
a blank look in response. She
jumped up from her chair. “Carbon
makes over 3 million bonds and all
other elements combined make
only 300,000,” she clarified, pointing
to the element in question on
the large periodic table that hangs
on her office wall.
“Chemistry is a lot of life lessons.
Like why your shampoo works and
why the combustion engine is not
the answer,” said Kuehnert.
Although her talent for teaching
is evident, Kuehnert’s career did
not follow a straight line from her
childhood “experiments,” which
led her parents to hide the household
chemicals, to the classroom.
Kuehnert began her undergraduate
degree at Washington State
University, hoping to be a chemical
engineer. She met her husband
there, who was a football player for
the Cougars. They started a family
and at 30, after her second child
was born, she had what she called
a “mini-midlife crisis.”
With her husband’s encouragement,
Kuehnert enrolled at
Edmonds Community College
thinking that she might enter the
field of nursing. Her old science
credits were out of date, however,
and while re-taking all her calculus,
biology and chemistry courses,
she was inspired by one of her
chemistry instructors, a Russian
emigrant.
“She spent 20-some years getting
out of Russia,” Kuehnert recalled,
during which time the instructor
and her husband lived
like paupers. “When you leave, you
aren’t allowed to take any linens
with you, or jewelry or money. So
they brought lace to sell. What an
inspiring woman. She showed me
that I could do more than I thought
I could.”
Kuehnert had experience with
teaching scuba diving lessons and
horseback riding, but never considered
a career in academia until
her experience at Edmonds turned
her into a true believer in the community
college system.
At big schools like the University
of Washington, where Kuehnert
transferred to complete her bachelor’s
degree and subsequently
earned her masters, faculty members’
research and published works
are often considered more important
than their teaching ability. (To
illustrate the impact of this values
system, Kuehnert said that an article
printed in the UW Daily while
she was a student there claimed
a UW “Teacher of the Year” had
never been granted tenure at the
school.)
Kuehnert has been teaching at
Shoreline since 1996 and said she
prefers the small class sizes because
she can get to know her students.
She points out that, in spite of the
misconception that it is easy to
earn an “A” at community colleges,
SCC transfer students have some
of the highest GPAs in the chemistry
department at the University
of Washington. She called her students
“brilliant” and remembered
one in particular who had been told
in high school that he had a learning
disability, and is now studying
biochemistry in graduate school.
As for RateMyProfessors.com,
Kuehnert has not seen the site or
the many glowing reviews of her
teaching style posted over the past
few years. Is it possible that she is
too busy to engage in the national
pastime of typing one’s own name
into a search engine?
Kuehnert cracked her broad, signature
smile and laughed. “Now
I have to go Google myself!” she
said.
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