Student Spotlight: Jonathan Britt

Senior math major Jonathan Britt said FMU has played a major role in helping him find his career path and to find good people to share it with.

Britt has liked math for most of his educational career but only realized he wanted to take a path toward graduate school and become a college math professor after seeing the community of professors, as well as being a tutor at the FMU Tutoring Center.

Britt originally planned to attend FMU for only a year to take care of prerequisites before transferring to USC for civil engineering. He had almost completed the prerequisites he needed to transfer when he discovered he enjoyed teaching and helping other students.

“Being around the FMU professors in the math department and the chemistry department, seeing how they all got along so well, made me think what a great job that would be to have for the rest of my working life,” Britt said. “I really enjoyed the experience of tutoring at the Tutoring Center and helping students and getting to see the light bulb moment is always really rewarding.”

Britt said both his parents graduated from college, and he was inspired by his mother, who was also a math major.

After Britt decided to stay at FMU for a degree in math, he said he has never looked back or second-guessed his choice.

Britt said he takes his education very seriously and kept the decision to stay at FMU based primarily on academic motives.

“College for me has always been more of what I get out of it and less about the social experiences,” Britt said. “But I am really grateful that it worked out for me to be at FMU because I have some really good friends here.”

Once Britt knew he would be staying at FMU he began to make connections in the campus community despite being a commuter student. Britt became a member of the math club and is currently the president of the club. Britt is also a part of many other organizations and activities on campus such as the Honors program and the Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM).

Britt said he originally began attending BCM before he was a student at FMU because he had a friend from his church who had invited him.

“I really value BCM a lot and now that I am a student here it means more to me because it’s important to have a community of fellow Christians to be mutually encouraged by,” Britt said.

Britt enjoys spending his spare time running, playing the piano, playing pickup soccer or playing ping-pong. Pingpong is near the top of Britt’s list of things to do outside of school.

“If you don’t know where to find me, in the UC playing ping-pong is the best place to try and find me,” Britt said. 

Britt said he enjoyed becoming the president of the math club; however, he said the role was initially very hard to get accustomed to.

“At first it stretched me a little bit dealing with all the new club responsibilities,” Britt said. “But I got into a stride and now I think I’ve learned a lot about leadership and time management. I feel like public speaking was a weak point that I had but speech class and putting what I learned from that class into action has really helped me improve myself.”

Britt said the Honors game theory and politics class taught by Associate Professor of Political Science Richard Almeida was one of his favorite classes.

“Not to dis any other class, but that class was amazing,” Britt said. “In that class, we learned about the ways that we use math in everyday decisions and how politicians use math. To me, one of the reasons I love math so much is that it’s everywhere.”

Outside of classes and campus activities, Britt enjoys the outdoors. He enjoys hiking in the mountains and exploring new places.