List of past teaching experience (last updated 1996)

Excellence in Teaching Award Winner (1992)

Based upon my teaching performance during the previous academic year, I was nominated for the University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award. I was one of the two graduate students to win an award for that year from the University of Washington. The other was Peter Shaeffer, a Physics graduate student who designs worksheets for introductory Physics classes that I often utilize in my work for the Minority Student Engineering Program. I won $2000 along with the recognition, but I quickly spent it on my wedding (you know how weddings are...).

Math Tutor at the University of North Texas

During my summers off as an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin in 1986-1988, I tutored on a private basis for students at the University of North Texas classes from rudimentary algebra up to and including business calculus. I also have some experience tutoring advanced K-12 students in basic algebra and trigonometry from those summers.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 201 (Winter quarter 1991)

This class was taught by Dr. W. T. Sullivan. I TA'd two sections of approximately 25 students each. The course covered the topics of Cosmology, Stellar Evolution, the Solar System, Origin and Evolution of Life, and SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). My responsibilities included designing homeworks, labs and weekly quizzes, grading, and running two discussion sections.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 150 (Summer quarter 1991)

This class was taught by Dr. P. Hodge. I TA'd two sections of approximately 10 students each. The course covered the solar system exclusively and extensively. My responsibilities included designing homeworks and quizzes, managing in-class labs and running the two discussion sections.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 101 (Autumn quarter 1991)

This class was taught by Dr. B. Balick. I TA'd two sections of approximately 25 students each. The course was a general survey and introduction to Astronomy. My responsibilities included writing homeworks, labs and exam questions as well as grading and managing the two discussion sections.

Participant -- Astronomy 500 (Autumn quarter 1991)

This was a graduate student seminar course with 6 students run by Dr. B. Balick. The goal of the course was the improve our teaching via discussion of problems and solutions. We utilized ``microteaching'', a process in which the teacher is videotaped and then played back for comment by both the teacher and observers. We also talked about strategies for writing effective homeworks and exams.

Tutor -- Minority Student Engineering Program (1992 - 1994)

On an informal and at times volunteer basis, I tutored mathematics up to and including Calculus, Vector Calculus, Probability, Differential Equations for minority undergraduates majoring in engineering. I also tutored Physics courses from basic Mechanics, through Electromagnetism, Waves and Quantum Mechanics. Usually, this was for 5-10 hours per week. Another responsibility I had was working out detailed solutions to some of the homework problems for a MSEP publically available help manual. Also, I worked with the students in 1994 attempting to incorporate computers into their education using applications such as Maple, Mathematica, LaTeX and Theorist on Macintoshes.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 101 (Spring quarter 1992)

This class was taught by Dr. W. T. Sullivan. I TA'd two sections of approximately 25 students each. This course and its responsibilities was similar to the previous Astonomy 101 course. In addition, I presented a guest lecture on the Geochemical Carbon Cycle to the entire class of 200 students.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 201 (Summer quarter 1992)

This class was taught by Dr. J. Brown. I TA'd two sections of approximately 10 students each. This course and its responsibilities was similar to the previous Astronomy 201 course. In addition, I organized the final course review session and handouts for the class.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 201 (Winter quarter 1993)

This class was taught by Dr. W. T. Sullivan. I TA'd two sections of approximately 25 students each. This course and its responsibilities was similar to the previous Astronomy 201 course. In addition, I organized the final course review session and handouts for the class.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 212 (Spring 1993)

This class was taught by Dr. G. Lake. The class met five times per week and had approximately 35 students. The course covered similar ground as Astronomy 201 but was geared for a higher level of student as part of a linked set of science courses. Along with the professor, I participated in the daily discussions, designed the homeworks and quizzes and was responsible for the grading of quizzes and term papers. I also gave 3 or 4 of the lectures on my own during the quarter while the professor was away.

Instructor -- Astronomy 101 (Summer 1993)

I gave the lectures for this class and oversaw two TA's who were responsible for two sections each. Enrollment in the class was approximately 50 students. The course was a general survey of Astronomy...similar to other Astronomy 101 courses. I wrote the homeworks and exams, and worked with the TA's to write other materials such as labs and on many exam questions.

Instructor -- Astronomy 101U (Autumn 1993)

I had sole responsibility for this class of approximately 40 students. The class met twice a week in the evenings. I wrote all the lectures, homeworks, labs and exams, and I did all the grading myself. My Spring 1994 syllabus is available in the ``Syllabi, Course Outlines, Study Guides'' section of my teaching resources page, and it has been similar for each time I've taught a 101 course on my own.

Teaching Assistant -- Astronomy 201 (Winter 1994)

This class was taught by Dr. G. Lake. It was similar to previous 201 courses except the sections were geared more toward discussion than review. Exams were deemphasized, and the grade depended largely upon the homeworks (which I helped write in some cases) and the term paper assignment (which I wrote but did not grade). I co-taught two sections of about 30 students each with the help of another graduate student, John Collier, and I also gave a week of lectures to the entire class of approximately 160 students.

Instructor -- Astronomy 101U (Spring 1994)

Very similar to the Autumn 1993 version of the course that I taught, though some of the issues that I covered and the way I covered them were a bit different. This is because I let student input have a large influence over the direction and pace of the lectures.

Participant -- Education Curriculum & Instruction 573 (Spring 1994)

This was a round-table discussion committee on K-12 science education. My responsibilities included examining and critiquing the current Project 2061 publications ``Science for All Americans'' and ``Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy'' and discussing the issues in this blueprint for educational development with the panel of 15 professors and graduate students in both science and education. Also, we wrote editorial articles and had other outside projects related to the discussion. I intend to take some of the ideas from this committee and apply them to future courses of Astronomy that I teach.

Facilitator -- Calculus, Differential Equations, Vector Calculus (1993-4)

Starting this past academic year, my responsibilities as tutor were shifted somewhat in that I spent much of my time with the Minority Student Engineering Program as a facilitator, following a set of 6-10 students through a first-year math sequence designed for future engineers. Some of my resources from that work are listed in another page. My responsibilities included attending lectures and running a discussion section in parallel to these lectures, writing worksheets for the students that went a step beyond current course material, creating quizzes for the students and grading and evaluating their progress in the course and keeping in communication with the professor of the course, Dr. N. Koblitz of the Math department about guidelines and goals for the course.