Having a PhD in Biology is not new science teacher Dr. Colleen Krivacek’s only impressing attribute. She is also a renowned Anatomy and AP Biology teacher who has taught at the college and high school levels for seventeen years. Dr. Krivacek received the call to teach later on in her life, and since then has won awards and taught at several schools on the East Coast – most notably, Boston College.

Dr. Krivacek tries to show her students how excited she is about students and says that her students will tell you she is “manic” on some days. She “tries to offer real-life applications to show her students how science is used in the real world.”

Dr. Krivacek remembers one of her favorite moments of her teaching career. “It’s kind of funny because there is this one memory that sticks out in my head, and it’s kind of a strange one, but it really defines what I am looking for as a teacher – which is just to reach kids and make them interested and excited about science. There was this one kid at the boarding school I taught at, and he was a problem in every other class except mine. I wrote him a college recommendation because nobody else would. I had good things to say about him, but I found out about a year or two later that he had actually written his college entrance essay about me.”

The Krivacek family moved to the West Coast three years ago because Dr. Krivacek’s husband received a job offer. “The East is very, very different. Obviously, the weather out here wins. But I do miss the East. We spend every Christmas in Mammoth because I can’t face Christmas without snow,” she said.

Dr. Krivacek loves spending free time with her children, and is also an active rower. She gets up every morning to row in a women’s rowing club called ZLAC. She has been rowing for 27 years and “is very dedicated to it.”

Having both taught at and attended boarding school, Dr. Krivacek says Cathedral has reminded her the most of boarding school and makes her feel the most comfortable. “Right away, when I came here I just felt like I was at home,” she said. The spirit of the community here on campus makes her enjoy coming to work each day.

Dr. Krivacek says that she is excited for what this year has in store. “I live for when the light bulb goes off in the students’ head,” she said.