Dr. Katharine Stewart ’85 is unabashedly honest about her experience at NCSSM. “There’s kind of two stories there,” she says. As the keynote speaker for NCSSM’s 45th Convocation, her story of resilience in the face of two different undiagnosed anxiety disorders – which, though now identified, still challenge her today – will surely resonate with NCSSM’s students, many of whom will likely be challenged in ways they’ve never experienced before.

But first, the best of times.

“I had extraordinary teachers at NCSSM,” Stewart says, “and my educational experience there was really life-changing.”

All throughout her 10th-grade year at Southwest Guilford High School, Stewart’s sole focus was on being accepted into NCSSM for her junior year. For a student who found great joy in pushing herself academically, she had become frustrated by the lack of advanced courses available to her in her home school. At night her engineer father tried to feed her intellect through real-world scenarios drawn from his professional experience, but it wasn’t enough. NCSSM seemed the only match for Stewart’s growing ambitions. So, she dug in, maximizing what was available to her, and decorated the covers of all her notebooks with inspirational quotes handwritten on small pieces of paper that reminded her of the end goal.

Stewart’s hard work was rewarded with a letter of acceptance from NCSSM, and from the beginning, she got exactly what she had been looking for. And it was a shock.

“You know, you’re in your home environment, and you think, ‘Oh, I’m pretty smart,’ and then you get to Science and Math,” Stewart says. “Suddenly, you’re kind of attacked by some self-doubt and some fear of ‘Oh, my gosh. I’m not as good as I thought I was.’”

Despite those early doubts and the undiagnosed mental health challenges, Stewart excelled in her classes, thanks to the unflagging support of teachers who pushed her harder than she had ever been pushed. They were, she says, encouraging her to achieve in ways she thought inconceivable. “Through that experience, I learned that I could – and still can – do things that I didn’t think were possible for me to do.”

But she was struggling emotionally. Though her classmates have in the years since all recalled her as outgoing and gregarious, Stewart’s own perception and recollection were nothing of the sort. “I did have a group of friends,” she says, “and we spent a lot of time playing cards and watching MTV, but inside I was all wrapped up in my own angst and my own pain. And I still felt weird, like maybe I still didn’t belong in some ways. But where I didn’t feel like an outsider at NCSSM was in my academic ability. I felt supported and encouraged to be as strong as I possibly could. It was really nice to be in an environment where you got socially rewarded for being strong academically.”

As debilitating as it was, Stewart’s anxiety also provided her with one of her most vivid memories of NCSSM. She had developed the habit of rushing through her precalculus exams as fast as she possibly could. Today, Stewart recognizes that as avoidant behavior. But in the mid-’80s, she simply thought she was trying to “run away” from the test.

Richard Brown, her precalculus teacher, knew she was not double-checking her work. Each time Stewart rushed up with a completed exam, Mr. Brown sent her back with it.

“He’d say to me, ‘Go back, sit down, and check your work. Just go through it one time. That’s all I’m asking.’ I remember just being sick to my stomach. I was embarrassed. And I didn’t know that I was having an anxiety attack. Mr. Brown didn’t know at the time that he was helping me face these avoidance issues I was having, but he was. And there are times now when I’m having an anxiety attack and I’m trying to avoid a situation, I’ll think of Mr. Brown, and I’ll hear him saying ‘Just one more time.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, I did it in pre-cal, I can do it now.’”

An ongoing recognition

Professionally, Stewart has split time between classrooms, communities, and clinics as a psychology professor, therapist, and NIH-funded researcher, as well as administrative buildings as a leader in academic affairs at universities in the southeast. For the last nine years she has been at NC State University, most recently as Senior Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs. 

It’s in the classroom, though, with the opportunities it provides to engage organically with students, where Stewart’s heart truly lies. In June she voluntarily left her Senior Vice Provost position to become a tenured professor in NC State’s Department of Psychology. There she will return to the familiar role of helping facilitate the intellectual growth of undergraduate and graduate students in the department and will, among additional responsibilities, also lead a grant writing course for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows across the university.

As with Mr. Brown’s encouragement to go over her work just one time, it took years before Stewart fully understood the role NCSSM played in her personal and professional development. Such ongoing recognition over the course of one’s life stands as a testament to the lasting transformative nature of the Science and Math experience.

“Truly, when I look at the career I’ve ended up having, I can tell you that my career as a professor and scientist began in those NCSSM classrooms and in those experiences with those faculty. I had never experienced education the way I experienced it at Science and Math, had never experienced that feeling of not thinking I could do something and being shocked at how much I could do.

“That’s how you create a young adult who’s willing to get out there on the leading edge of learning,” she continues. “On the edge of fear is where entrepreneurship happens, it’s where discovery and innovation happens, and it’s where the creative artistry in any discipline happens. I learned that as a student at NCSSM, and ever since I’ve always tried to be that kind of professor for students.”