“After I started working, that was it,” she said. “It’s like I found my calling. It was like ‘Oh this is not bad, even though the first day was snowed in!’”
Though there wasn’t a position at Centennial for her that fall, she was encouraged to apply at East High School. Since then, she has also worked at Stockdale High School, Centennial again, and Independence High School, where she is currently. Each move gave her a different subject to teach, she said, and she was eager to try new things in her career.
Bramer later returned to CSUB to get her master’s degree in mathematics teaching, which she obtained in 2010. It was there that she really became a part of the CSUB family. She especially enjoyed classes taught by Dr. Joseph Fiedler and Dr. David Gove.
For the last 10 years, Bramer has also taught off and on at CSUB as her schedule has allowed. She mostly teaches the “teacher wannabes,” as she calls them, the pre-service teachers who need to pass an algebra and geometry class before their credential program. Now, she’s a member of the Mathematics Department (part of CSUB’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering) not just as an alumna but as an educator herself.
“I think that after working so hard herself, she has great empathy for the various hardships that some of her students encounter and have to go through,” said Dr. Gove, chair of the department. “While there is a wide variety of our classes that she could teach, we usually ask her to teach the classes for students who want to become teachers themselves. She is a great role model and inspiration for these cohorts of students.”
The professors in the department have seen her along every part of her professional and personal journey, Bramer said. They saw her go from a student to a teacher, from a teenager to a wife and mother of two sons. They even know her husband, Richard, well too. Overall, her experience at CSUB has been a great one, she said.
“I met lots of good friends over there, and that Math Department is something else,” she said. “It’s like a little family to me. There are not a lot of places with professors where you can just knock on the door and just go in and rant. Cal State definitely