The Sandra Bruesch Memorial Prize

For the graduating senior who best embodies the spirit of Whitney teacher Sandra Bruesch. Ms. Bruesch taught more than 8,300 students over a career of 44 years, inspiring young people from every background to believe they too could excel in math and science. When Whitney students finished taking all the math courses the school offered, she created a new course, college-level Abstract Algebra and Topology, and volunteered to teach it on her own time. She and partner Marilou built our acclaimed robotics program, donating personal funds and coaching our teams to win regional and national competitions. Ms. Bruesch was a NASA Teacher in Space candidate, and received numerous honors including Disney Teacher of the Year and the inaugural Jaime Escalante (Stand and Deliver) Award.

From Los Angeles magazine, November 1987:

Sandra Bruesch, a math teacher at Whitney High School in Cerritos, is an avid member of the Prometheus Society, limited to people with IQs of at least 164. Her pride in this is understandable when you consider the obstacles she's overcome.

“I really come from a poverty-stricken background,” says Bruesch, who was born in Milwaukee but spent her childhood moving around the country with her family. “I basically didn’t go to school until the fifth grade...I had atrocious grammar, but I had several teachers working on me in tandem. To me, school was a treat. It beat the heck out of picking cotton.”

As a child she picked cotton in the San Joaquin Valley, helping her mother, an orphan with an eighth-grade education, and her stepfather, who eventually found work as a machinist. Once the family settled in Southern California, Bruesch spent her afternoons and weekends baby-sitting her younger brother and sister so her parents could work the swing shift. Since Bruesch’s parents were grateful to be working, it was hard for them to understand their daughter’s passion for learning.

“Sometimes it was very difficult,” Bruesch recalls. “My mother just always wanted me to have a job.” An important influence was her German teacher, who introduced her to Beethoven concerts and other cultural events. Bruesch went to high school in Covina and La Puente and graduated from Whittier College with a degree in German and mathematics. Her master’s thesis from Claremont was based on the untranslated work of German mathematicians.

Bruesch is the sort of cheerful, jolly-hockey-sticks woman who can face an entire room of adolescents and make them believe that yes, math is fun. Since arriving at Whitney eight years ago, where she’s chairperson of the math department, she’s started 12 new courses, giving this magnet school a reputation for excellence in math and science. She’s also a mentor to other teachers in a UC Irvine program, and participated in the NASA Teacher in Space program.

Bruesch often finds herself spending spare evenings grading papers or writing letters of recommendation for college-bound students. “I don’t know how to describe myself,” she says softly, “When I was 14 I decided to be a math teacher. It seemed that was something smart people did.”