By: Kevin Yu ’18
Just this year, in coordination with the new Physics Nine program and influx of new teachers, alumni volunteer Adam Wilson ’12 returns to Bellarmine to teach freshman physics. A graduate of Bellarmine in 2012, he remembers a Bellarmine quite different than it is now.
“My first year at Bellarmine was the year they started construction on Sobrato. I had construction all four years. They finished Sobrato my sophomore year. During my Junior year, there were portables in the middle of campus, and Lokey was being built, and my senior year the SLC was built, and for graduation we walked out of it,” Mr. Wilson said. “I was in it once during my time here at Bellarmine.”
Yet, for all the differences, Mr. Wilson still sees the same Bellarmine spirit in the students.
“It [The campus] has a very different campus feel. It feels very collegiate now versus when I was here,” Mr. Wilson said. “For the most part, the student body is the same. The programs are the same.”
Following Mr. Wilson’s graduation, he attended Gonzaga University and received a Bachelor of Science in Economics, specializing in public and macroeconomics. His involvement with Bellarmine began soon after his graduation from Gonzaga.
“I graduated from Gonzaga in 2016, so I’ve been out of college for a year now. Last year, I coached swimming in South Bay, but then, I mentored the robotics team here and ran a fall project for freshman and sophomore students. I then mentored in the spring during the season,” Mr. Wilson said.
He was inspired to teach at Bellarmine after talking to many of the teachers here.
“I talked to Mr. Monroe, a former teacher here and robotics moderator, and he talked me into the program. I also knew Mr. Yav very well, and he talked me into it [teaching],” he said. “So here I am, teaching freshman physics. It’s pretty fun.”
Mr. Wilson plans to teach at Bellarmine for the next year.
“After this year, I hope to take another year off and go to graduate school to pursue a PhD, so I never thought about teaching economics here,” Mr. Wilson said. “I just want to go and pursue a further economics degree and further expand my knowledge.”
Yet, Mr. Wilson also wishes to continue mentoring robotics while he is at Bellarmine.
“When I was at Bellarmine, I did robotics all four years and was part of the drive team, the team that drove the robot. I helped build a lot of components on the robots, and four years before me, my brother was also on the team, so that’s how I got involved in robotics,” Mr. Wilson said. “Once I went to college, my brother and my father started mentoring team 254, so it was natural that when I got back from college that I would go and mentor it.”
In the future, Mr. Wilson aims to participate in scholastic education by researching the role of technology in expanding access to education.
“When I look at a problem I always expand it to the biggest possible solution. That is just who I am,” Mr. Wilson said. “Especially with all our modern technology and individualized student learning and all these educational technologies that let teachers reach students, specifically online through distance learning, and there’s no clear vision of what this will look like for this century. I really want to be a part of this giant group of educators and stakeholders trying to sculpt or create a vision of what we could do in these next hundred years.”