27-year chemistry professor puts cadets first
Dr. Kimberly Gardner, U.S. Air Force Academy associate chemistry professor, poses for a photo in a conference room on the Academy campus in Colorado Springs Jan. 21, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Rayna Schmidt)
By Katherine Spessa
U.S. Air Force Academy Strategic Communications
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. – In a conference room nestled among the classrooms and academic laboratories of Gregory Hall, cadets bring their individual readings to the table. The unique class Dr. Kimberly Gardner is teaching is more of a discussion than a lecture. The cadets choose their topics and what they read.
Today, the discussion is about gemstones. This is a chemistry course, but the cadet’s broad core of knowledge leads over and through political science, history, economics, earth sciences, eventually settling upon blood diamonds.
The blood diamond discussion flows along, touching upon philosophy and ethics, posing the question: would you use what you know of blood diamonds in your decision to purchase one?
“I love to see them able to tie what they’ve learned in other classes to what we’re talking about in our class and to their own lives,” said Gardner, a U.S. Air Force Academy chemistry associate professor. “In many universities, the core is so limited you’d never see that.”
The small classroom setting and conversations with cadets are just what Gardner loves most about teaching at the Academy.
“Cadets are amazing – the best part of my day is spent with cadets,” she said. “[I value] their respect for and interest in learning, the ability to interact with them one-on-one and really get to know them, learn their stories.”
In addition to her years of teaching, Gardner and her family have taken in cadets as a sponsor family, acting as mentors and a home-away-from-home. She maintains those relationships over the years and recently hosted graduates she sponsored from the 2005 and 2006 classes and their families to her home for the holidays.
“This weekend, our grad from the class of ’99 will be here; her son is over at the [U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School]. We’ll be a second-generation sponsor family,” she laughed.
Col. Michael A. Hyland, chemistry department head, first worked with Gardner in 2006 when he was a junior officer in his first assignment at the Academy. Now he works as her department head nearly 20 years later.
“She has been here since 1996 and she is an absolute wealth of knowledge, both academically and institutionally,” Hyland said. “She’s not just a problem solver, she’s a fixer. Last year, I gave her a [coffee] mug that said ‘chaos solving agent,'” he joked.
“I’ve been at the Academy for 27 years,” said Gardner. “Very few people are lucky enough to get their dream jobs right out of college. I did.”