From Crafton Student at 15 to Award-Winning Educator

Publish Date: Sept. 30, 2026

Long before Teresa Thompson became an award-winning accounting professor, author and national presenter, she was a 15-year-old Crafton Hills College student struggling with math.

“I really struggled in math,” Thompson recalled during a recent return visit to Crafton. “I had great math teachers here. It helped. It made the difference.”

Thompson grew up around Crafton. Her father, longtime faculty member T.L. Brink, joined the College in 1989, and she remembers occasionally sitting in on his classes as a child and seeing how much he loved teaching.

At 15, Brink encouraged his daughter to begin taking classes at Crafton while she was still in high school—essentially dual enrollment before it became commonplace. Although Thompson remembers feeling nervous and intimidated, she found a supportive environment where faculty cared about their students.

“It was a wonderful place at the perfect time,” she said. “I did not think I could get past math. And I had a great teacher and the supportive structure that I needed.”

After Crafton, Thompson attended West Valley College, where tutoring other students helped her discover her own love of teaching.

“I told my tutoring director, ‘I want to tutor forever,’” Thompson recalled. “He’s like, ‘Teresa, that’s called teaching.’ And I was like, ‘I wanna teach then.’”

Thompson went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting from UC Riverside and an MBA from UC Irvine. She became a CPA, worked in public and corporate accounting, and spent six years as a full-time faculty member at Chaffey College before returning to West Valley College—this time as an accounting professor.

Today, Thompson is nationally recognized for finding creative ways to make accounting more engaging and accessible. She has co-authored an open educational resource accounting textbook and created “8-Bit Accounting,” a series of interactive learning games inspired by classic arcade games. She also teaches other faculty how to use artificial intelligence to create engaging learning experiences.

When Thompson received the J. Michael and Mary Anne Cook/Deloitte Foundation Prize—one of the accounting profession’s highest teaching honors—she thanked her father for showing her that teaching at a community college could be fun and engaging.

Returning to Crafton after many years brought her journey full circle. The campus has changed, she said, but she recognized something familiar in the faculty and staff who clearly enjoy what they do and want students to succeed.

Her own experience continues to shape how she teaches. When students worry they won’t succeed in accounting because they aren’t good at math, Thompson can tell them something they might not expect from their accounting professor: she struggled with math, too.

Asked what the 15-year-old sitting in a Crafton math class would think about where she is today, Thompson’s answer was simple.

“I wouldn’t have ever dreamed it.”

Her advice to today’s Crafton students is to take advantage of everything the College offers—including tutoring, the library, student clubs and opportunities to connect.

“If they can take advantage of all the support,” she said, “I think they get to see more of the possibilities and see more of themselves.”

For Thompson, Crafton was where those possibilities first began to take shape.