Teaching

I did my undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts college (Swarthmore College), where the small class sizes, and in particular, the upper level seminars in physics and math, helped shape my interest in pursuing a graduate degree in physics. I am interested in one day teaching in a small, undergraduate-focused college environment, since I benefitted so strongly from one myself. As such, I am pursuing various avenues to become a more effective teacher, including a Graduate Teacher Certificate from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan. The certificate includes attending a teaching orientation, attending multiple workshops on teaching practice, at least two semesters of teaching experience, a mentorship experience related to teaching, and writing a teaching philosophy statement. I have taught in a significant variety of physics and astronomy courses at the University of Michigan:

Physics 391: Introduction to Modern Physics Lab

Undergraduate lab, University of Michigan, LSA Physics, 2024

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for 2 sections of a sophomore-level modern physics lab in Winter 2024. I assisted the professor with helping groups of 2 students work through each experiment, held weekly office hours for student questions about the data analysis and report components, and (for one section) graded the students’ data analysis codes for each lab.

Physics 360: Waves, Heat, and Light

Undergraduate course, University of Michigan, LSA Physics, 2021

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for the honors version of the third course in the introductory physics sequence, covering special relativity, thermodynamics (with some statistical mechanics), and waves in Fall 2021 and Winter 2022. I led two weekly discussion sections (50 minutes each), where students worked in small groups on worksheets covering problems related to the topics covered in class. I provided a short introduction to the topics on the worksheet, helped individual groups with questions, and then went over the solutions to the worksheet problems at the end of the section. I also graded the weekly problem sets, as well as some short-answer questions on weekly quizzes.

Astronomy 107: The Dark Side of the Universe

Undergraduate course, University of Michigan, LSA Astronomy, 2020

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for 4 sections of a virtual, asynchronous half-semester survey course on dark energy, dark matter, and black holes (2 sections each half-semester) in Fall 2020. I held weekly office hours, and graded student papers (2 page creative assignments on each of the three topics), as well as short-answer questions on quizzes and optional extra credit mathematical problems.

Physics 236: Life Sciences Lab II

Undergraduate lab, University of Michigan, LSA Physics, 2020

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for 2 sections of an introductory electromagnetism lab for life sciences students in Winter 2020. Gave a five-minute introductory lecture on each week’s lab, guided groups of 2-3 students through completing the experiment and filling out a lab template (Excel sheets), and graded each group’s completed lab sheets.

Physics 141: Elementary Lab 1

Undergraduate lab, University of Michigan, LSA Physics, 2019

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for 2 sections (Fall 2019) and 4 sections (Winter 2021, virtual) of an introductory mechanics lab for scientists and engineers. Gave a five-minute introductory lecture on each week’s lab, guided groups of 2-3 students through completing the experiment and filling out a lab template (Excel sheets and Jupyter notebooks), and graded each group’s completed lab sheets. In Fall 2019, I also wrote weekly five-minute quizzes with multiple choice and short answers questions on the content of that week’s lab manual.