BCC Mathematics Professor Rony Gouraige is a man of numbers — 3.9, for instance. That’s the score he got in every category of the most recent BCC Student Evaluation Report (the top score is 4.0). Or the number 1 — as in the “One Professor” series of videos on You Tube that in 2012 featured BCC alumna Cynthia Morales proclaiming, “Thank you, Professor Gouraige for showing me that in life, like numbers, there are always an infinite amount of possibilities.”

Yet surprisingly, teaching was Professor Gouraige’s second career. “I worked in commercial banking for 12 years,” he recalls. After receiving a master’s in math, he came to Bronx Community College in 2004 and, while finishing his doctorate, worked his way up from substitute lecturer to associate professor. Today, he teaches everything from Probability and Statistics to calculus to remedial math.

“One of the things I’ve learned over many years of teaching is students have to believe that you care about them — that’s when they become receptive to what you’re trying to teach,” Dr. Gouraige says with a smile. “All these students who say they hate math — watch them when they solve a problem. There’s a gleam in their eyes and smiles on their faces. All they saw was the pain. They never saw the success. Once you show them they can do it, that’s 90% of the job.”