Israel Villarreal Tintaya

UPDATE: Israel has completed his studies and graduated with a degree in Mathematics.
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Israel is studying Mathematics at UMSA. He is a member of INELA (National Evangelical Friends Yearly Meeting)

"I was a Christian since I was born. I grew up in the country and moved here about five years ago. I am the secretary of my church, and am always pretty busy. After high school I did some extra work to bring my skills up to level before entering the university.

Now that I see math more clearly, I see how it is related to all of life. I always liked math and saw little pieces of how it was part of life. And as I had always liked math I entered the UMSA and found a new vision of the world. In high school I wasn’t very good at math, but I still really liked it and now I am very glad to be continuing to learn about it.

My thought for following in math is to help the young people of my church, in the majority of cases the youth don’t know math very well. I think after getting my certificate I will start working in high schools, then maybe in private universities, but my largest goal is to become a professor in the UMSA.

How can I tell you about my family? In my family we are seven people, but we aren’t only seven because my father also pays workers, we have three workers, and one of them is now married. Sometimes I help them work, but now that I am studying I don’t have much time. He also supports my studies alot and helps me. My younger brother is also in his first years of University and it looks like he will also be a professional. My other siblings are still in school. When I was five my mother died, and when I was ten I got a new mother, I don’t like to say stepmother, she’s my mom, and she also supports us, she’s very good.

I’ll tell you something about my department. It isn’t a department that does a lot of drinking and partying, it is a very good department; even though they aren’t Christian they help me live my life well. In addition I have lots of work to do. Moreover, many people think that math only solves equations, but really it is much more than that - it is connected to works, language, and the rest of life. It is a very useful skill. How math is universal you can be an economist or a accountant in many places. The professors from the UMSA are like any other university there are the mediocre and the really good ones. In my department there are also math conferences that we can go to, not just in La Paz but in other departments and cities. There we always learn about interesting themes like Newton’s theory of Time and other things. Finally, my department uses a lot of Portuguese because much of the knowledge comes from Brazil. I also know something of English, not because I studied it, but more that I am always paying attention to things that I see on TV or in the movies. That way I have learned a bit of Portuguese and English."

Israel's studies have been sponsored by a private donor.