Teaching Portfolio

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”

― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

Teaching Philosophy

Through years of teaching in different contexts, my teaching philosophy has come to rely on fostering active learning and metacognition, collaboration, and empowering students to develop their own unique instincts about the Universe and apply them to unfamiliar situations.

I delve more into what this means for my approach to teaching in my teaching statement, which I am happy to provide on request! In the meantime, find some of my teaching bona fides below.

Teaching Fellow Positions at Yale

During the course of my Ph.D., I served as a Teaching Fellow (TF) for nine courses:

  • PHYS165 - General Physics Laboratory I
  • PHYS170 - University Physics for the Life Sciences I
  • PHYS442 - Introduction to Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics
  • PHYS410 - Classical Mechanics
  • S&DS - YData: Humanities Data Mining
  • PHYS165 - General Physics Laboratory II
  • PHYS171 - University Physics for the Life Sciences II
  • ASTR343 - Gravity, Astrophysics, and Cosmology
  • PHYS/ASTR600 - Cosmology

Certificate of College Teaching Preparation

In grad school, I earned a Certificate of College Teaching Preparation (CCTP) at the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning. Earning the CCTP also meets requirements for the US-wide Center for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Associate.

Curriculum Development & Lecturing

I co-developed and co-taught a week-long classical mechanics course for the Yale Physics Fundamentals Bootcamp for incoming graduate students, which I have delivered three times (in person, virtually, and hybrid) to excellent reviews. If you prefer to see me in action, I gave a guest lecture on axions at the Tri-Institute Summer School on Elementary Particles (TRISEP) in 2023 that is immortalized here.

Teaching Awards

In November 2021, I became an inaugural awardee of the Leigh Page Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching from the Physics Department at Yale.