Before she even arrived at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Nicole Gysin achieved a few important milestones. She won a national math competition and was the youngest woman to compete at the inaugural USA Women’s Track & Field Sanctioned Open Decathlon Championships in California.
Her passion for both mathematics and athletics inspired Nicole to combine her studies at STAC in a double major. Through her courses, she’s been exploring how she can parlay these interests into a future career.
“For a while, I thought I would become a physical therapist,” she says. “While taking some of my math and exercise science classes, I realized that I would much rather use my math major to maybe become an actuary, analyst, or a math teacher and use my exercise science major to become a personal trainer or coach on the side.”
Nicole enjoys her math courses, especially Differential Equations, and appreciates STAC’s small class sizes because she is able to closely connect with her classmates and professors, such as Associate Professor of Mathematics Dr. Meghan De Witt.
“Dr. De Witt definitely had a strong influence because she was always so encouraging during classes and helped each student really understand the topic that we were learning,” Nicole says. “My advisor, Dr. Lee, has also been an influence by helping me with whatever comes up during the semester.”
As a student-athlete, Nicole is a part of STAC’s Cross Country and Track and Field teams, and she is also the recipient of athletics and academic scholarships.
When she isn’t devoting time to her team and studies at STAC, Nicole works as a physical therapy assistant at Excel Physical Therapy in her hometown of Waldwick, New Jersey, and as a copy center technician at Staples. She also tutors and babysits, and shares her love of sports with students at her former elementary school, the Academy of Saint Paul, as a track coach and teacher assistant.
Nicole attended high school at Immaculate Heart Academy where she was in the STEM honors track and participated in several extracurricular activities, including varsity cross country and track, as well as orchestra, student council, National Honor Society, and the Christian Service Board.
Her favorite sports to watch are basketball and baseball—she is a “huge fan” of the New York Yankees—and she enjoys spending time outdoors at the beach or lake. In the next five years, Nicole plans to earn both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and take off in her career.