Mathematics has been taught at Colorado College from the beginning. The Reverend E.N. Bartlett is listed in the first college bulletin as the mathematics instructor, although a footnote claims that he resigned. He was also on the Board of Trustees and served as secretary to the college corporation. Apparently, he was ready to step in as mathematics instructor, too, if needed.

The first bonafide mathematics instructor, Sanford Clark Robinson, stayed for a year before turning to a career in journalism. Early instructors turned their hands to a variety of subjects: the engineer James Hutchison Kerr recalled teaching a range of subjects in 1875 in the College's first building, on Tejon street facing what is now Acacia Park:

Here I taught algebra, geometry, conic sections, physics, meteorology, English, Roman and Greek history, English literature, Caesar, Vergil, Cicero, Zenophon's Anabasis and Homer's Iliad.

Kerr was actually well-prepared for teaching mathematics; in 1862, he shared the first Mathematical Prize at Yale, and two years later, came in second in a similar contest. As was the case with several other college faculty, Kerr moved to Colorado in 1874 because of failing health (perhaps tuberculosis). Colorado Springs and its dry climate was, at the time, a mecca for tuberculosis sufferers.

Only with the arrival of Frank Loud in 1877, by which time the College itself was beginning to achieve some stability under President Tenney, was the foundation of mathematics teaching soundly secured.