Where Do We Go From Here? Interview with Dr. Tim Trenary

By Carly Compesi, Staff Writer

I sat down with Dr. Tim Trenary, a professor from the math department, to talk about the journey that brought him to Regis University. What I originally assumed would be a math-heavy interview soon became a conversation about everything from magic and love to Zen and indigenous flute-making.

“I always assumed I’d go to college because I wanted to be a scientist,” Trenary began, detailing his childhood in Southern Illinois. “I spent a lot of time digging into science—trying to separate hydrogen from water in my mom’s washroom, building lasers, and things like that. Never anything successful, but I was trying.”

Trenary’s scientific outlook shifted after he took calculus in junior college. “That really resonated with me—all of a sudden I’m doing this thing and I really liked it,” Trenary explained. “I was also really into ritual magic...and math looked like magical writing to me. The script is so beautiful and arcane, and there’s so much meaning held in it, right? So writing math was something I really loved.”

From there, Trenary pursued mathematics at the University of Illinois. In his family, this move was a big deal. “We were a really close family,” Trenary said. “There were, like, five of us including extended family, and I grew up in a single parent home. My father left when I was really young. So it was a big deal when I went away. It was a three and a half hour drive, but I would still come home every weekend. Slowly pulled away, and every step away was an emotional mess in the family.”

Being away from his family wasn’t the only challenge while Trenary attended the University of Illinois. “Math was different than calculus,” Trenary said. “I didn’t know what was going on in my math classes. I loved them, but I didn’t know what was happening. I was really bad at math, and the only class I got an A in was a class in Zen Buddhism. Then, I took a probability class, and halfway through it, I was, ‘Maybe I should talk to the professor.’ And I had never done that before. We talked, and all of a sudden, all these things started coming together and I figured out how to do these things and I swooped out of a dive right at the end.”

“That experience of being a terrible student is something I still bring with me,” Trenary continued. “Because I can see it in some of my students, too. I see a student who is amazing and so together—people who are actually doing the studying and the work and turning things in. I’m always amazed by my students who have everything together. It’s like, ‘How do you have it together at your age?’ I can’t even imagine. I felt like I didn’t have it together until I was 45. But I think I also understand my other students—I usually click with [them], and with my students who are just struggling, because I get it. I get how you can be lost. I think it helps me help them find their way back, because I found my way back, and I really had to bushwhack to get to clarity.”

Trenary moved yet again when he began his Master’s degree at Purdue University, which was also not as successful as he’d hoped. At Purdue, he met the woman who would eventually bring him out to Colorado for his Ph. D. While the relationship didn’t end well, he did enjoy his time at Colorado State University, where he met another partner during his final year. Since Trenary was farther along in his program than her, he decided to pursue Masters in statistics at CSU. This was cut short when Trenary was offered a position with IBM in Boulder.

IBM, too, was short-lived. Trenary worked there for about seven years working on image processing software in their printing division. When the financial crash began, he ended up in a software development position that he described as “soul crushing.” By the end, he said he was only there for a paycheck. “I hated working at IBM,” laughed Trenary. “And they didn’t like me all that much, either. I’m not a corporate guy. I ended up finding my way back to [teaching]. I just wanted to study math. I just loved math and [teaching] was a vehicle for that.”

This love was what brought Trenary to Regis University. With IBM and his personal life falling apart, Trenary realized he needed a change. While at Regis University, Trenary has met students he loves, found himself in a new relationship, and been given the opportunity to teach Zen Buddhism—an interest sparked by the course he adored during his undergrad and rekindled over the past four years.

“I was like, ‘I gotta find something that I can love,’” Trenary said. “And as soon as I set foot on campus, it felt like love. Honestly, it feels like most things I do come down to love. How can you go wrong with that, right? If you’re loving it, then that’s the right thing to do. Why would you do anything other than what you love? It hasn’t always led to immediate happiness, but it’s why I’m where I’m at today. I’m married to an amazing person that I respect and love—my life is just blessed.”

His advice to our newest graduates continues this logic. “Knowing what your heart is can be a difficult thing,” admitted Trenary. “But I’ll find students, and they’re clearly miserable in college, and I feel terrible because you’re expected to go to college, right? And in some ways, statistically, you’ll have a better income—maybe. And I just think, ‘What are you doing here? Why are you doing this to yourself?’ And more often, I have math majors who either aren’t terribly good at math—which is okay, I wasn’t great at math—or they just don’t like it, and I’m like, ‘Why are you doing math?’ There’s no reason to do math if you don’t like math.”

Ultimately, Trenanry believes in tuning out the beliefs of others in favor of whatever one truly enjoys. “Following your heart,” Trenary said. “There’s just nothing else worth doing in this little blip of a life we have.”

Where Do We Go From Here? Interview with Dr. Mark Bruhn

By: Carly Compesi, Staff Writer

photo credit// Mark Bruhn

Recently, I spent the morning with Dr. Mark Bruhn, a professor of English who specializes in cognitive literary studies and has taught at Regis University since 1996. I was told by his colleagues that his story was an interesting one, and I quickly discovered the truth behind that statement.

“I wasn’t going to go to school,” Bruhn began. “My parents wanted me to, and that was my main motivation not to. I was a terrible English student through school—I just hated it.” 

This rebellious attitude proved to be a theme in our conversation. “It just goes along with my character,” Bruhn said. “You can’t tell me what I should do—you tell me I have to research, I have to be Catholic, I have to go to high school, I’m gonna say, ‘I don’t want to do any of those things. Those things are for fools.’ But as soon as I don’t have to do any of those things, they become interesting to me. It’s gotta be my choice. I’m still like that, you know.”

Despite concerns about Bruhn graduating from high school at all, he completed high school and stayed in Connecticut. There, he spent a summer hitchhiking to his job in the produce department. After finding that position unsustainable, he joined his parents in Maine and got a job at a gas station.

“I had no way to meet anybody,” Bruhn explained. “I’m an eighteen-year-old man desperate for friends [with] no way to meet them, so I thought, ‘Well, I guess one way to meet people would be to take some classes at the University of Maine at Augusta.’ The University of Maine at Augusta is essentially a community college branch of the University of Maine. I signed up for a few classes and, lo and behold, they were remarkably powerful to me.”

Bruhn spoke highly of classes such as Creative Writing, Russian Literature, Adolescent Psychology, Theory of Personality, and Abnormal Personality. After spending three semesters of unprecedented academic engagement and inspiration at the University of Maine at Augusta, his professors recommended that Bruhn pursue a Bachelor of Arts. Bruhn took this advice and spent the next two and a half years completing an English major at the University of Southern Maine. His studies provided him with a new outlook on literature and faith.

“When I got to college, I started reading William Blake,” Bruhn began. “Blake had a very different understanding of Christian religion—almost the exact opposite of mine. I was persuaded by Blake that I’d been thrown to tyrant in my head. It was limiting my experience rather than making it good or orienting it in a positive way. And so, the kind of devotion I had given to the Bible and to books like Thomas Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, I now starting giving to people like William Blake and William Wordsworth and Coleridge. In a way, I exchanged a fundamentalist Christianity for a religion of poetry and the tradition of poetry in English literature. I guess I’m still very much centered there, in that kind of spirituality.”

However, Bruhn’s newfound love of English literature locked him into a somewhat intimidating fate. “[I] did realize that, ultimately, I would have to be a teacher,” Bruhn said. “That was a little daunting at first because I was really afraid of public speaking. My voice would get really tremulous, and I could feel the blood coming to my cheeks. [I] challenged myself to get over it by putting myself on the spot—I’d volunteer to do presentations first, all that kind of thing. And now I’m at the point where I just love to stand in front of an audience and hear myself talk, so obviously, there’s hope for the fearful.”

His public speaking was soon put to the test. “[My wife and I] found out that we were going to have a child,” Bruhn explained. “I was working at a deli at the time, and it didn’t sound like a deli was going to pay for three peoples’ existences. So I realized, yeah, I’m going to have to come up with something, so I started applying for high school teaching jobs.”

From there, Bruhn ended up teaching high school at Lincoln Academy, which did not go as well as he’d planned. As Bruhn explained, his love of literature seemed to outweigh his love for his students. “I was 23 years old,” Bruhn said. “I looked like I was about 12. I had senior high school students who were much broader and hairier than I was. They could threaten me, and it would work. I went optimistically with this great idea that, ‘Oh, I’m so into poetry and literature. I’m going to turn all these kids onto this.’ And they knew they were going to make a whole lot of money lobster fishing, so they weren’t really interested in literature.” 

Luckily, Bruhn’s time at Lincoln Academy didn’t turn him away from teaching altogether. While at Lincoln Academy, he also taught introductory English classes at the University of Southern Maine. During this experience, he found himself valuing the motivated, respectful older students that he had in his evening classes. Most importantly, it allowed him to realize what he valued most in academia. “Of course I love my students,” clarified Bruhn. “But I really love helping them to love the thing I love. That made it clear that I needed to get a Ph. D.”

His graduate studies began at Duke University, but because of the program’s new emphasis on stardom through literary studies research, he left before the end of his first year. “I did [English] because it was feeding my soul,” explained Bruhn. “I wanted to share that with people, not self-glorifying self-promotion.” As a result, Bruhn and his family moved back to Maine, where he managed a law book and business directory publishing company. This, too, failed to feed his soul in the ways he wanted, but by this point, he was committed to holding a position for at least 3 years before trying something new.

“I had never held a job for a length of time,” Bruhn admitted. “I would quit a job because there was a Yes concert and my shift conflicted with it. I had a really terrible CV [curriculum vitae], and I’d now just quit graduate school as well.”

Bruhn gave graduate school a second try at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, which he spoke highly of. At age 33, he completed his Ph. D. This was followed by a year of teaching at Dalhousie before he came to Regis in 1996. “I guess, one of the messages I’d give to undergraduates is: You don’t need to know what you’re doing until you’re 35,” Bruhn laughed. “I think you should expect to play around with a bunch of different directions as you graduate. Get frustrated here and enthralled there and just negotiate a future over the next decade and a half, [don’t] chastise yourself or beat yourself up over the fact that you haven’t figured it out.”

When I asked Bruhn what he considered the most unexpected part of his journey, his answer was heartwarming. “I didn’t know I wanted kids until my girlfriend told me she was pregnant,” he smiled. “You have options when you hear that, and the couple needs to discuss those options, but for me, there was no option at all. I wanted that child. As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to be a dad. So one thing that’s been unexpected is just how much I’ve loved being a parent. It’s certainly the best part of my life.”

His advice to future graduates also brought a smile to my face. “Everyone is going to say to you, ‘What are you going to do now?’” Bruhn said. “You need to correct them immediately by saying, ‘You mean, what have I accomplished? I just finished my Bachelor’s degree and I’m so proud.’ Don’t get distracted by your future, right? Celebrate your present. It’s huge what you’ve accomplished. It will go where it needs to go and you can trust that. Tune out, turn off, and drop in.”

A Regis Student’s Guide to Denver Dining

By: Carly Compesi, Staff Writer

For the College Classics

McCoy’s Diner - McCoy’s Diner quickly became a staple of my collegiate experience upon my arrival to Regis University. This diner is on Federal just a block away from the school, which made it easy to walk there with my friends at night. It’s a classic diner menu, but their cinnamon rolls are uniquely gigantic. Though McCoy’s is no longer open 24 hours, they are offering limited indoor dining for those who want to give it a try.

Brooklyn’s Finest Pizza - Brooklyn’s Finest Pizza is just across the street from Regis University and makes for an easy lunch, dinner, or late-night snack. Regis University students can also receive a discount with their student ID. In my opinion, it beats out a few of the pizza chains, but I guess you’ll have to taste it to find out for yourself. Dine in, pick-up, and delivery options are available. 

Las Tortugas - According to my friends, you cannot go wrong at Las Tortugas. They serve a wide variety of sandwiches and each one sounds amazing. They also have horchata and aguas frescas available. It’s a bit longer of a drive for Regis students compared to the other restaurants listed but they have delivery options as well as pick-up.

For Something a Little Classier

Sushi Hai - One of my friends’ favorite dinner spots is Sushi Hai, which is located on 32nd and Lowell. This restaurant offers both variety and affordability, making it perfect for a college student. My friends recommend the rocket roll, which has tuna, spicy mayo, cucumber, avocado, tempura flakes, eel sauce, and sriracha. Sushi Hai currently offers pick-up via online ordering. 

The Noshery - The Noshery’s convenient location at the corner of Lowell and Regis Boulevard makes it an easy spot for Regis students to grab a morning latte or a fresh slice of banana bread. I especially like their lemon poppyseed bread and chai tea latte. The magic of this little cafe continues on their back wall, which displays products from local artists and business. The “Nosh” is currently open for indoor and outdoor dining, pick-up, and to-go options.

Atomic Cowboy (Denver Biscuit Company and Fat Sully’s) - Atomic Cowboy has already gained the attention of national television networks, and of course, the local college population. For an inexpensive, extra-large, and extra delicious slice of Fat Sully’s pizza, stop at the window near the storefront. For savory and sweet dishes on biscuits, enter Denver Biscuit Company. My personal favorite is the Dahlia sandwich. Dine in, delivery, and pick-up options are available.

For the Sweet Tooth

Little Man Ice Cream - Little Man Ice Cream has become an iconic Denver landmark, making the parking difficult but the ice cream worth the wait. I’m grateful for their dairy free options, but I may be even more grateful for their milkshakes. Little Man Ice Cream is surrounded by other great restaurants and overlooks LoDo, which makes this place even more fun. 

Sweet Cow - Once you’ve had dinner at Sushi Hai, walk across the street to pick up some ice cream from Sweet Cow. They have flavors that you won’t see elsewhere, and those flavors change regularly, so you might just have to go more than once. Sweet Cow also has a wide range of dairy free options, making it even better. I’d recommend a flavor, but you can’t go wrong. Pick-up and delivery options are available.

The Bardo Coffee House - This coffee house is a perfect late-night study spot for anyone who needs to break out of their dorm or apartment. I tend to ask for the baristas to “surprise me” and I haven’t been disappointed yet, although I have yet to figure out what “secret ingredients” they claim to include. The Bardo Coffee House is currently open for indoor and outdoor dining, pick-up, to-go, and delivery options.

For the Legal Drinkers (+21)

Goldspot Brewing Company - Goldspot Brewing Company is located inside a little brick building near 50th and Lowell. I know this brewery to be a student and professor favorite, and while I’ve never tried it for myself, I’ve passed it enough to catch a glimpse of their fun, Colorado-proud atmosphere. Goldspot is now open at limited capacity for those who want to taste what is on tap.

Rocky Top Tavern - This is another student favorite given that it is close to the Regis University campus. Rocky Top Tavern is highly regarded by Regis Rangers because of their drinks and their deals, but don’t forget about their food—especially their tater tots. Rocky Top currently offers indoor and outdoor dining options. 

Book Bar - As an English major and a book lover, the Book Bar holds a special place in my heart. I used to study there after ordering a mug of hot chocolate and one of their book-themed snacks. While the independent bookstore and wine bar combo is now restricted to curbside pick-up, I still recommend stopping by next time you find yourself on Tennyson Street.