Living

Published: Sunday, Nov. 08, 2009

Boy genius still in a class of his own at age 21

As an 8-year-old, Tom Church studied math at Cal Poly; now, at 21, he’s at work on a doctorate

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Jenny Church knew there was something special about her son, Tom, when he was 21 months old.

Standing in line at the Post Office, the toddler looked at a sign above the door and said, “Exit.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” his mom said, thinking maybe he had just recognized the letters.

Then he spoke again: “Please enter here.”

Shocked, a women in front of them turned to Jenny Church and said, “Did he just read that?”

When The Tribune profiled Church in 1996, he was an eager 8-year-old taking a math class at Cal Poly. After that the “profoundly gifted” child went to college at 13, picked up several languages and now, at 21, is working on a doctorate in math.

“People asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I said I didn’t know,” said Church, who is studying and teaching at the University of Chicago. “But I just wanted to do whatever would keep me from being bored. And I think that is still what’s motivating me. If they stopped paying me to do math, I’d have to find something else to pay the bills, but I’d also have to keep doing math to exercise that part of my brain.”

‘Born smart’

Tom Church’s intellect didn’t come out of the blue. His maternal grandfather went to college at 15. His mother has a history degree from Cal Poly, and his father has a doctorate in oceanography. But it was clear from an early age that he was learning at an accelerated pace.

“He was born smart,” his mother said.

Keeping him challenged, of course, would be difficult. At 3, his mother was reading “James and the Giant Peach” to him when he finally said, “Mom—would it hurt your feelings if I just read it myself?”

“I couldn’t read fast enough,” Jenny Church said.

Tom arranged a deal with the local library that allowed him to check out an unlimited number of books. And as a child, he began reading math books and Supreme Court decisions.

While his mother home-schooled him, the Cal Poly class did feed some of his hunger for math.

“This is the only place I could get math problems that are challenging,” he said in 1996.

Tom, who would have been in second grade when he took the Cal Poly class, did well there, despite being a curiosity.

“I remember there was something,” he said recently, “at least among the girls in the class … sort of the, ‘Oh, look, it’s so cute — a little kid in class.’ ”

After The Tribune profile was published, Tom enrolled in the Bellevue- Santa Fe School in Avila Beach. But even the charter school wasn’t enough.

“He always wanted to know more,” said his stepfather, Curt Borchardt.

At age 11, Tom took the SAT, scoring 1420 out of 1600. But many colleges and universities simply felt he was too young for admittance.

The family researched colleges with early entrance programs and found Clarkson University in upstate New York. Once accepted, Tom enrolled in college, and his mother and stepfather bought a bed and breakfast in the state to be close to him. Still, they were five hours away. And while Tom lived in a housing unit with other young students, he had to live like an adult at 13.

“It was a time of living on your own, doing your own laundry, studying for tests, going to office hours,” he said. “It was not a skill set I had come across.”

Clarkson actually had a gifted child program, so there were other students closer to his age. But when he decided to pursue a school with a better math program, he transferred to Cornell a year later. Even though he had two years of college credits, Cornell required he enroll as a freshman — otherwise he could have graduated from college at 17. Still, he was

noticeably young.

“When I got to Cornell there was some sort of rumor going around that some kid who was, like, 14 or something was there,” Church said.

Fortunately, he said, most students assumed it was another student, who looked younger than him. Despite being four or five years younger than other kids in his class, Church eventually assimilated.

“Parties — I went to some,” he said. “But that’s not really my scene.”

Early on, he hung around high school girls. But, he added, “By my last year and a half in college, I was dating another college student.”

While he maintained a normal social life, there was always that quest to learn. Church has dabbled in numerous languages, including Spanish, French, Arabic, Vietnamese and Russian. And to this day, he constantly has math on his mind. Even when he goes to concerts, he’ll think about numbers.

“I realized at some point that this happens sometimes,” he said. “So I made a deal with myself that if possible I would spend the opening act thinking about math, and then I would put it aside for the band I went there to see.”

While someone with Church’s intelligence might want to use the advantage to make millions, he’s content with pursuing a collegiate teaching career. And he’s already shown he’s good at it.

As a teaching assistant, Church won the Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2008.

While research is challenging, he said, it’s rewarding to see students understand something after he explained it. And that keeps him intellectually satisfied.

“I have found a path in life that can keep me from getting bored.”