Geena May Texas 4000

Mr. Cline is the sole reason that I am studying mechanical engineering at UT Austin. He was not just a teacher and a robotics club sponsor, but he was a mentor and a huge motivator. He supported my engineering efforts even when I failed, and was never hesitant to go the extra mile to make sure that I could bring my imagination to life. When I took Mr. Cline’s STEM Engineering class my senior year of high school, one of our projects was to build a gumball machine. My partner and I wanted to make a 3D snowman machine, but we were stumped because bending acrylic into a perfect circle would prove to be very difficult and turn out very uneven. Mr. Cline, didn’t want us to give up on our idea, so he went ahead and bought 3 different sizes of acrylic tubes so we could build our snowman. The catch was that he had to order a minimum of 6 feet of each diameter of the acrylic tubes even though we only needed four inches of each. Mr. Cline ordered it anyways, just so we could make our snowman. It is acts of kindness like these that made Mr. Cline so special. He didn’t have to order 18 feet of acrylic for our snowman gumball machine, but he did it anyways because he wanted us to succeed. Now, my snowman machine sits proudly on my desk as a constant reminder of the dedication that Mr. Cline had for motivating students like me.

Mr. Cline left this world after a long, hard battle with colon cancer in the spring of 2014. This took a huge toll on both the JMHS Robotics Club, and James Madison High School as a whole. Anyone who took Mr. Cline’s classes or was a part of the robotics club will tell you that Mr. Cline is probably one of the best teachers to ever pass through James Madison High School. He never got mad, no matter how annoying the class might be, and he never stopped motivating kids in the STEM field, even when his body was telling him to rest. I could not think of any better way to continue his enthusiasm about engineering then by studying engineering so I can inspire young people just like he did.