As a ‘math coach,’ Cuffe challenged students to surpass expectations

by Chuck Gordon

Dr. Barry Cuffe played baseball at the University of Miami (well, a handful of innings, anyway), coached JV baseball at Wingate for a bit, and was the University's faculty athletic representative for 17 years. So of course he goes straight to a sports metaphor when describing his teaching philosophy.

"I feel like I'm a math coach, like I'm a thinking coach,"Cuffe says. "I'm going to try to design exercises - schedule opponents, if you will - that help them develop some skills and learn. I just get great pleasure out of watching the growth that happens."

Cuffe is retiring this month after more than three decades teaching business analytics. He is one of three professors from the Porter B. Byrum School of Business who are calling it a day after spending years at Wingate. Also retiring are Dr. Ellis Hayes, assistant professor of management, and Dr. Jimmy Watkins, assistant professor of accounting.

Cuffe saw lots of growth over the years. His classes had a reputation for weeding out the pretenders, but the difficulty came from a good place: He made students work extra hard because he knew they were capable of more. He would also go to great lengths to help students who were struggling with the work or battling external factors.

Adam Reed '06 (MBA), a chef who owns the restaurant Santé in Matthews, was taking a Cuffe class several years ago when his lead cook quit. Reed knew all about sunk costs and didn't want to leave the class midsemester, so Cuffe let him come to his office early in the morning to go over what he'd missed the night before while trying to get through the dinner rush.

"That was very good of him," Reed says.

Barry Cuffe talks with prospective business students in 1999.

Cuffe employed old-school methods in a student-friendly way. On any given day, the conference table outside Cuffe's office in the Neu Building would be three-quarters full, most of them Cuffe's students, working their way through statistics problems. Cuffe would come out of his office periodically to nudge them along. His colleagues asked him how he got students to show up outside of class hours to do math problems.

"I just tell them they can," he says.

The students knew they needed help - Cuffe made sure he challenged even his best students - and he provided it. It's all part of a coach-like desire to push his students beyond their perceived limits.

Cuffe unapologetically continued to call on students in class, even when told that the practice was passé. He wanted to keep them on their toes, to push them to get better, and, sometimes, to amuse himself. They didn't necessarily like it, but it made them better students.

"Kids are just as smart today as they ever were," he says. "They just haven't been conditioned to stimulate the brain, to work it, to struggle with concepts. Anything that takes longer than a couple of minutes, they're not interested in."

As a "thinking coach," Cuffe saw it as part of his job to help them learn to work through difficulties.

"If we're not teaching the stuff at a high-enough level, if we're not expecting enough from them, they're not going to give you more than they think they need to," Cuffe says. "I don't think I'm all that unreasonably hard, but I don't mind it if the students think I am, because then I'm going to get more out of them."

Those who were initially frustrated often later thanked him for pushing them to reach new limits. Every year in May, students nominate Wingate faculty and staff members to receive a Mentor Medallion, a sort of "thank you" students give faculty and staff members at the end of the academic year. Once, Cuffe says, he received one from a student who failed his class. "That's hard to do!" he says.

And many alumni continue to consult their homework from his class once they get into the working world. Roe Chitwood '24, a project engineer for a building contractor, kept all his notebooks and online documents from Cuffe's productions class.

"I know one day I have an algorithm that I created for these classes that might help out," he says. "That class: It's so needed, but it's tough."

In just three years, Cuffe graduated from Miami with degrees in math and physics, while playing backup catcher on the baseball team. He immediately entered a master's program and discovered that he liked teaching. After teaching at UT-Chattanooga for a few years, he went back to Miami to earn a Ph.D, and in 1994 he was hired by Wingate.

People throughout campus made use of Cuffe's uncanny math brain. He was the go-to for students who needed to run their research data through a statistical model, helping countless honors students with their projects (and helping get a few of them published). He created a simulation program that the University's baseball team uses to produce signs telling the pitchers which pitch to throw.

His most important non-academics legacy is as faculty athletic representative. Working for the University president, the FAR sits between the athletics department, the faculty, student-athletes and the president's office, helping mediate disputes and making sure athletes are eligible.

Luckily, Cuffe says, the disputes are few and far between. His most significant achievement on the FAR front, he says, was scouring a softball shortstop's transcripts to find a way to make her eligible for the season.

"I just like helping people and using my skills," he says.

• Hayes spent more than 32 years, in two separate stints, teaching Wingate students about business management. According to Dr. Sergio Castello, Hayes "used active learning strategies and encouraged higher-order thinking and independent learning in his management courses."
• Watkins, who is retiring after 15 years at Wingate, is like a coach who wants to get the best out of you, says Imran Ibrahim, who is graduating on Saturday with an accounting degree. "He's going to make sure you do the drill right until you get it," Ibrahim says. "When you get that drill right, you're unbeatable."

Learn more about studying in the Porter B. Byrum School of Business.

May 11, 2025