Teaching and Service Activities

Lectures on “Data Handling and Interpretation” for the Fundamentals of Advanced Chemistry course for second-year students at Flinders University.  Topics included measurement error, standard deviation, data interpretation and fitting, hypothesis testing and other statistical handling of data.  An emphasis was on the use of Excel for data analysis.

Participated in the Flinders Foundations of University Teaching program, April 2010.  This intensive program is designed for new academic staff for developing new techniques for teaching and learning within Flinders.

As an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, University College, I taught NCSI 363:  The Science of Global Warming and Climate Change. The course was designed for non-science majors and included topics in chemistry, physics, geology, environmental science, and science writing related to climate change.  This was the first time that this course was offered at UMUC.

In the academic year 2004-2005, I completed the Preparing Future Faculty course at the University of Missouri-Columbia. This curriculum was for a selected number of graduate students from throughout the university. This course is taught nationally, and covers many aspects of professoriate life, from gaining tenure to novel teaching methods to the academic job search.

In the summer of 2004, I was a teaching assistant at the Brookhaven National LaboratoryNuclear Chemistry Summer School (Upton, NY). This program is sponsored by the American Chemical Society and the Department of Energy and is a competitive summer course for advanced undergraduates in nuclear and radiochemistry and includes both lecture and lab credits offered through SUNY-Stony Brook. With another teaching assistant, I taught and prepared the lab portion of course in experiments in nuclear and radiochemistry along with teaching lecture material to the students.

While at the University of Missouri-Columbia, I also completed several of the requirements for the Minor in College Teaching. This included courses in the Professoriate and College Science Teaching. I have applied methods from these courses in my teaching experiences.

As a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, I was a teaching assistant for Chemistry 15.  This course was designed for non-chemistry majors and integrated chemistry with current events and environmental issues.  I also was a teaching assistant for Chemistry 33, the third course in the freshman series for chemistry majors.

I have also tutored high school students in math and science topics including chemistry, physics, algebra and geometry as part of the NIST Adopt a School Program at Watkins Mill High School, Gaithersburg, Maryland in the spring and fall semesters of 2008.