About my teaching

I don't normally post about my teaching. This blog is mostly for keeping memories about my family life. However, my work is a big part of who I am and I want to dedicate a moment to that here. I feel good about the way that I am slowly encouraging the scientific community to be more collaborative and inclusive. This excerpt represents a snippet of my work and thoughts as a university physics professor.

Visibility of Women in Physics

More girls and young women are attracted to physics when they see adult women in physics. That is a finding from a social science study conducted several years ago (discussed in an NPR All Tech Considered article called, “Why aren’t more girls attracted to physics?” in August 2013). Visibility helps girls envision themselves in similar positions. In fact, visibility of women in physics is the most dominant factor for girls to make the decision to pursue physics, more dominant even than education, economic status and race. I take this role seriously. This past year, I have given seven public lectures to a variety of audiences and ages. I have more engagements scheduled for next year. 

Being a Mentor

I consider mentoring my students to be the most important part of my work as a professor. This personal interaction prepares students for the road ahead and guides them through transition periods of becoming themselves. I mentored students as they applied to jobs, graduate school and summer internships. I reviewed applications, resumes, personal statement essays and helped with edits, motivation and networking with professionals. As we do every year with our students, I explained how to make applications stronger. I wrote recommendation letters that contained personal stories of examples of each student’s strengths. With my senior students in particular, I discussed pros and cons of their choices ahead. One of the students wrote this on my Fall teaching evaluations, “She went above and beyond by helping with career/grad school preparation.” To name a few, my graduating students were accepted into mechanical engineering, data analytics at Georgia Tech, aerospace engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, the masters internship program at University or Oregon. And we have students going to work for Lockheed Martin, Intel, Northwest Trek, and Seattle City Light. Go Team!

It is important to me that our students feel mentored by faculty, and they feel a sense of belonging in our department. When surveyed, they describe caring professors that guide them through tough decisions. They describe their comfort level in talking to their professors and seeking advice. I am proud of the work that we do to make physics education a positive, inspiring, and successful experience for our students. 

Outreach

Last year, I wanted to reach out with a focus on caring for and appreciating the earth. In addition to several visits to elementary schools and public lectures around the area, I served on the faculty for Holden Village last June, a popular Lutheran retreat village in the remote wilderness of the Cascade mountain range. I offered several talks and discussions on energy, sustainability and cosmology. One attendee said that my lectures on energy were the first time he had seen a demonstration of how electric current can be generated from motion, as in an electric motor. I also co-lead a worship service at Holden Village, and lead a star-themed story time for children. While there, I toured their hydroelectric dam, which impressively powers the entire village that ranges in population from about 100 to 400 people. I gained knowledge (and photos) to share with my students about energy independence and sustainability innovation. I witnessed for myself that innovation, creativity, and prioritizing local energy sources is key to sustainably caring for the earth, a lesson I had said to my own students many times yet had no personal experience with it. 

Reflection: My Changing Strategies for Teaching through Active Learning 

My teaching strategies have changed in the last decade. Last Fall, I re-structured my Electromagnetics course, to be more student-centered. It was interesting to revisit my nearly-decade old notes that I once thought represented “active learning.” When I taught this course in 2008 and incorporated pedagogy improvements in 2009, I felt that my teaching was at the “cutting edge” of active learning and even innovative. And it was, at the time. I incorporated the best of what was available, including Peer Instruction, my unique personal whiteboard response system, and J.I.T.T. (Just In Time Teaching method). In 2009, I used my personal Google account to make use of a new technology called “Google Forms” to survey my students before class on the reading and give thought provoking questions. Now these forms are commonplace, and our school accounts have become Google accounts. Furthermore, when I looked at my old notes, I noticed something. Even then, when I had recently returned from a conference about research-based physics learning, I spent most of class time lecturing to my students. Mine was a presenter-centered classroom instead of a student-centered classroom. Things have changed a lot in Physics Education in the last decade. And so I have changed my teaching again now too.

So I prepared my students for class with “Flipped Learning,” similar to J.I.T.T. This time, I placed a focus on preparing students for class activities. During class, I had students working on the boards together solving problems, acting out the paths of charged particles, and doing group worksheets and playing problem-solving games I wrote about the content. I facilitated student-centered discussions about mathematical methods. Sometimes lecturing is necessary; in that case, I kept “mini lectures” to about 15-20 minutes, and then return to activities. 

This is what I’m calling a “Hybrid Flipped Classroom.” I have found that this hybrid compromise is the right balance for me, rather than a fully flipped classroom, where students hear little to no lecture from me during class. This kind of teaching requires the professor to give a lot of energy both inside and outside of class, orchestrating student activities and using student feedback to change the lecture each day, sometimes at the last minute.

In this notoriously challenging course, I also focused on helping students to find their strengths, because so often students learn more about their weaknesses. For each of the 13 students, I wrote a personal note to them about their strengths that they demonstrated on exams and/or homework. Some of the strengths I observed were honest problem solving, logical solution writing, mapping out what they need to do before doing it. 

It was a difficult course but the students stayed with me to the end and had good attitudes throughout. After all the hard work I put into making this course the whole package, it was touching to read the teaching evaluations afterwards. Students described my teaching with words like: clear, well-spoken, engaging, prepared, enthusiastic, thorough, working together, challenging yet feasible. Students talked about my classes as their favorite way to learn or even as the reason they chose to major in physics. As well as providing constructive ideas for me, all of my students “strongly agreed” that I challenged them to learn, communicated effectively, and showed a commitment to their learning. They rated me as an “excellent” instructor. I am so fortunate to have experiences like these.