Kay Tipton

Kay Tipton was an award-winning mathematics teacher at Vestavia Hills High School, a public high school in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, (a suburb of Birmingham). She had been at the school since its establishment in 1970. Tipton founded the Vestavia Hills High School Math Team in 1975 and had served as math department chair since 1989. Her math teams consistently ranked among the best in the United States in national competitions such as Mu Alpha Theta and many of her students have qualified for the prestigious USAMO (United States of America Mathematical Olympiad). The math team's entire senior class of 2005 also qualified for the AIME and nearly all of them became National Merit Finalists.

She is a two-time winner of the Mathematical Association of America's "Distinguished High School Mathematics Teaching Edyth May Sliffe Award" (1991 & 1992), a three-time winner of the White House Commission of Presidential Scholars Distinguished Teacher Award, as well as recipient of both the Golden Apple Teacher of the Year Award and Cornell University's Outstanding High School Educator Award.