River City Early College High School may have a small staff because of its small size, having just 50 students in its first year, but for 2016, Karin Marshall was voted by her peers the school’s Teacher of the Year.

Marshall teaches foundations of algebra, algebra I, and geometry. In its first year, RCECHS only has ninth grade students.

Next year the school will add on to the student body housing both a ninth and 10th graders. Marshall will then adjust her teaching schedule to offer algebra I, geometry, and algebra II.

“I generally find all my math (lessons) super interesting,” she said, adding she also enjoys science, chemistry and astronomy.

A self-proclaimed nerd, Marshall said she gets excited about the subject matter she teaches each day to her students. Something Marshall is especially excited about coming to the new high school is underwater robotics — a project that was just recently approved for funding.

“We wanted to do something a little bit different than the other two high schools are doing. They do the FIRST robotics competitions. So we’re doing the MATE underwater robotics competition, which is an underwater ROV — a remote operated vehicle. It’s a robot underwater,” she said.

Students will design and build the robot together, and then a student pilot will use it in a pool to perform different tasks. The robot will have cameras attached to it for the pilot to navigate the vessel.

Students have already been working on projects with Arduino single-board microcontroller kits that will be integrated onto the underwater robot. The kits are preparing the students with fundamentals to be ready for the competition challenge.

“We’ve been working with those until we figured out what the actual challenge was going to be for the underwater competition. They needed to learn those basic skills for that first,” Marshall said.

Marshall is a Texas native whose ocean engineer husband brought the family of five to Vicksburg to work at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory. The couple has three children under the age of 5.

Marshall taught math in Navasota, Texas, for almost four years before coming to Mississippi. She spent one year at Warren Central High School before going to RCECHS.

She said she always wanted to be a teacher, and loved pretending to be one as a child. The occupation runs in her family — her mom and aunt are also teachers.

Her favorite part of teaching is having a role in her student’s lives.

“It’s just fun. You get to interact with students at a vulnerable age where they are very impressionable, and you get to be a part of that, especially right now they are deciding who they are and who they’re going to be and what they’re going to be,” she said.

Marshall is interested in both math and science and was torn on which subject to major in while at the University of Houston.

In the end, she got her bachelor’s and master’s degree in math from UH.

Eventually she would like to obtain a doctorate and teach on the university level, but for now she is proud to be a Cougar at RCECHS.

“Right now I really enjoy high school. That age group is a lot of fun,” she said. “I really enjoy this school. The small atmosphere is great. We’re all a close-knit team.”