It All Adds Up
Games, math and coding inspire valedictorian Kimberly Gottula.
When Kimberly Gottula (’20, industrial engineering) was growing up in Placentia, her mother made sure that books and math-oriented board games were always at the ready. She wanted her daughter not only to learn to read early but also to develop an affinity for numbers and defy her older sister’s opinion that math wasn’t for girls.
Defy it she did. In May, Gottula graduated magna cum laude in industrial engineering from Cal Poly Pomona and she was the program's valedictorian.
From a young age, Gottula enjoyed puzzling over numbers. In the GATE program for gifted and talented pupils at Golden Elementary School, she was a year ahead in math. In her junior year at El Dorado High School, she signed up for dual-enrollment calculus, earning two semesters of credit at Cal State Fullerton.
During her senior year of high school in 2016, Gottula worked with the programming language Scratch through a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website to develop her game, Dress Up Stick Man. MIT posted Gottula’s game, which allowed users to dress a rudimentary figure by dragging and dropping hair, clothes, hats and footwear. Thousands of fans have played the game and posted their “stick man” and “stick woman” results.
“We all know that this game is my true legacy,” says Gottula.
When it came time to select a college, Gottula said, “I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I was good at STEM, and I figured Cal Poly Pomona could be a really good school.”
Photo above: Dress Up Stick Man, a simple dress-up game developed by Kimberly Gottula in 2016. Thousands have played it and is still played today. Try it yourself: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/100973283/
Not every element of STEM—science, technology, engineering and math—has been her cup of tea. Neither high school biology nor chemistry appealed. At Cal Poly Pomona, she tried out computer science and aerospace engineering but immediately changed her mind.
She eventually landed on industrial engineering, and it seems the apple did not fall far from the tree.
Before his untimely death from leukemia when she was in the sixth grade, Gottula’s father, Ron, worked as a mechanical engineer at Northrop Grumman. Her mother, Melanie, later married Joe Montoya, a building system specialist.
“The reason I like industrial engineering is because I get really frustrated by things that could work better or faster,” Gottula says.
Gottula is now a manufacturing planner at Lockheed Martin.
“I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I was good at STEM, and I figured Cal Poly Pomona could be a really good school.” – Kimberly Gottula (’20, Industrial Engineering), Manufacturing Planner, Lockheed Martin
One close associate who envisions success for Gottula is her former campus supervisor, Zoe Lance (’15, english), a communications specialist with the university’s Office of Student Success.
Gottula worked for Lance three years ago when the campus was planning for the conversion from quarters to semesters.
“She played key roles in so many student-facing projects, both during and after conversion—websites, social media, event planning and so many other things,” Lance said.
“She embodies the learn by doing ethos we are all so proud of. When something stalled or got a little thorny, she didn’t give up. Lockheed is immensely lucky to have her; she has the technical engineering skills, but she’s also a great communicator and collaborator.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions putting a damper on campus festivities, Gottula had to get creative. Her mother dyed her hair black for an on-campus photo shoot, for which Gottula wore her cap, gown, sashes and honor cords.
During a virtual celebration with the department chair and classmates, Gottula made brief valedictory comments, expressing gratitude for the people she had met, for her job, and for her mother, with whom she competed at Money Bingo and 4-Way Countdown all those years ago.