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Cline Looks Forward to Reading and Community Work After 31 Years of Teaching at Andover

This profile is the second in an ongoing series about the retiring faculty members in the Voluntary Retirement Incentives Program. Andrew Cline, Instructor in Mathematics, plans to stay active after he retires from Andover after 31 years of teaching and coaching. “I will miss terribly my colleagues and the time I spend in the classroom and on the baseball field, but I’ll be very busy, and I’m excited about that,” he said. Cline said that he is looking forward to further exploring his many hobbies, which include woodworking, tennis, golf, hiking and biking, as well as trying to “catch up on about 30 years of not reading.” He said that he and his wife are looking forward to spending the whole year at their home in Southwest Harbor, Maine, and are hoping to become involved in the community there. Cline said that he also plans to volunteer with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. “[My wife and I] became grandparents in March, and so keeping up with our kids, but also our grandson, will certainly be an important factor in our plans,” he said. Cline taught math and coached baseball and football at a public school in Berea, Ohio for six years before he was encouraged to apply for a job at Andover by a friend who was teaching here at the time. He was slightly reluctant to apply at first. “It was a foreign idea, and I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into,” he said. Cline said that he had a somewhat unorthodox interview when he finally decided to apply for the teaching position. “I had to meet with [the athletic director] during his lunch hour. So he took me to his house and we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…It was great,” he said. He moved to Andover in 1979 and served as a house counselor in Adams South, which was a boys’ dorm at the time. Cline’s children were one and three years old when Cline moved to Andover with his family, and they grew up on campus. “I think the dormitory was the biggest scary thing, where you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into, but after a while it became much more comfortable,” he said. Cline has also lived in Bishop North, Churchill House and Pease House. He served as cluster dean of West Quad North from 1993 to 1998. He said being a cluster dean was an interesting experience because “having been in the dorm with my small group of 20 guys, it was an opportunity to get to know tons of kids.” Cline said he has tried to keep in touch with the students who used to live in his dorms and also those he has coached. He now lives on Salem Street, conveniently located next to the baseball field, where he has been head coach since 1986. Sports have played a large role during Cline’s tenure at Andover. He has coached Varsity and JV Football, and all three levels of JV Soccer. He has served as Sports Information Director for the past several years. Cline said Andover first impressed him with “the enthusiasm and the energy that [his] colleagues had for teaching.” “It excited me to be with people who were interested, not just in math, but how to convey ideas, different interesting problems, different strategies for helping kids learn. That wasn’t really happening at my old school, so that was a big deal for me,” he said. Cline said he also appreciated the eagerness his students displayed. “Not everyone thinks that math is necessarily their thing, but everybody’s willing to give it a shot. Many kids are very enthusiastic, and even the ones who aren’t are sort of buying in to the fact that this is important,” he said. Cline grew up in East Aurora, New York. He attended the College of Wooster in Ohio, where he met his wife, Jennie Cline.