Say hi to Mr. Benedict! He is a Computer Science teacher for grades 9-12 and has not taught at The Academy before. He seems to really be enjoying himself at The Academy. He said, “I figured I wanted to try teaching, and the Academy seems like a very nice, happy place.” He has some experience from grad school, teaching adults, and mentoring junior software developers, but he is new to teaching high schoolers.

Mr. Benedict was born in Colorado Springs on the Air Force Base. Then he lived in Indiana when he was a kid, and he moved to Texas, Kansas City, Cedar Rapids, back to Colorado, and finally to New Mexico. He enjoys traveling. He’s been to a lot of places but there are still a lot of places he would like to go to. He has a dog and two cats. When I asked him if he liked cats or dogs better he said, “I prefer dogs. I’m not a huge cat person, but my daughter loves cats.” His hobbies are rowing and hiking. He loves Pad Thai and is a tenth-grade advisor.

In general, he wants to teach because he likes kids. He said, “I think they’re cool… and they’re way more fun to hang out with than adults.” During the pandemic, he homeschooled his daughter. He got into computer science from applied math. He has a background in applied math. He told me, “… I was focused on what’s called numerical linear algebra. And problems that I worked on were fast, direct solvers for large, structured systems. And in order to do that, you need to program a lot, … mostly in Fortran and C++ for that…”

When I asked him what he thinks about New Mexico, he said, “I like it a lot. I like the people, and I like the state a lot. I think the New Mexico government is a lot more reasonable than most other states.” He went to New Mexico Tech for a bit, and then he transferred to UNM where he got his BS and PhD.

In general, Mr. Benedict seems like a really nice person. You should go say hi!