When Stefanie Tate sees that one of her accounting students is having trouble grasping a concept, she thinks about flying camels and flip jumps.
Tate, an associate professor and chair of the Accounting Department, has been a competitive figure skater for more than 30 years. She says challenging herself on the ice makes her a more empathetic teacher in the classroom.
“It's a reminder of how difficult it is to learn new things,” she says. “I know what it's like to get problems wrong, because I know what it's like to fall down all the time. I know what it's like to need coaching, to need somebody there to guide you and help you do it better.”
Tate learned to skate on frozen ponds while growing up near West Point, New York. She didn’t get serious about the sport until her mid-20s, however, when a friend invited her to skate at a rink on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
“I started skating because I love to spin. I think it's just magical,” says Tate, who began taking lessons while working as an auditor at Big Four accounting firm KPMG in Washington.
Tate soon found a coach and put together a program for competitions. Skating against adult women of all ages, she finished second in her debut event — despite the music stopping midway through her program.
“My coach had trained me that, if it happens, to just keep skating,” says Tate, who advanced to a regional competition, which she won.
“It was one of the best experiences of my life,” she says. “You had all these women cheering each other on, lifting each other up.”
The daughter of two educators, Tate realized she wanted to be a college professor while earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Wake Forest University. After six years in industry at KPMG, she returned to school for a Ph.D. in accounting from Michigan State University. In 2001, she joined the faculty at the University of New Hampshire.
While there, she joined the Northeast Ice Skating Club. She’s now treasurer of the club (of course) and skates with its members twice a week at rinks in Lawrence and Haverhill, Massachusetts.
Tate, who joined UML in 2007, hasn’t competed in an event in about two years (“This job is a little time-consuming”), but she still savors her time on the ice.
“I enjoy the camaraderie with the kids. It's fun to be the old lady at the rink, doing most of what they’re doing at my age,” Tate says after a recent skating session in Lawrence. “I try my best to just think about skating while I’m out there. It feels freeing to race down the ice as fast as you can.”
While she’s more cautious about the jumps she attempts these days (“I can’t be walking into work the next day on crutches with a cast”), she is hardly taking it easy.