Education: BA, Goshen College, 1980; MS, Idaho State University, 1985; PhD, University of Texas at Austin, 1990. At SPU 1990–2022. Emerita since 2022.
Dr. Robbin O’Leary taught all levels of mathematics at Seattle Pacific University. She particularly enjoyed teaching calculus and abstract mathematics, as well as mathematics for those students who weren’t scientifically oriented. She earned her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in Number Theory, and considered teaching a “Number Theory” class at SPU a joy. Prior to graduate school, she taught math to seventh to 12th grade students.
Along with Number Theory, Dr. O’Leary was interested in mathematics education, particularly the education of undergraduate students and pre-service teachers.
For recreation, Dr. O’Leary enjoys reading, gardening, cooking, and music. As an undergraduate, she majored in music as well as mathematics and also continues to occasionally play cello “just for fun” and, before her retirement in 2022, in the SPU orchestra. She and her husband have two young-adult sons.
Selected publications
O’Leary, Robbin. “Thinking about the Infinite.” Response, Winter 2012.
Young, Sharon, and Robbin O’Leary. “Creating Numerical Scales for Measuring Tools,” Exploring Mathematics through Literature: Articles and Lessons for Prekindergarten through Grade 8. Ed. D. Thiessen. 2nd. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2015. In press.
Young, Sharon, and O’Leary, Robbin. “Creating Numerical Scales for Measuring Tools,” Teaching Children Mathematics Vol. 8 No. 7, (2002), 400–05.
O’Leary, Robbin, and Vaaler, Jeffrey D. “Small Solutions to Inhomogeneous Linear Equations Over Number Fields,” Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 336 (1993), 915–31.
Please view Dr. O’Leary’s CV (PDF) for additional publications.