Contents
Formal Positions
- Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
2008-2009 Grinnell College - CS187, Programming with Data Structures, Teaching Assistant
Spring 2007, University of Massachusetts Amherst - Aided students in office hours.
- Planned and led weekly discussion sessions involving group problem solving and small programming exercises to reinforce lecture topics.
- Prepared and taught the unit on recursion.
- Feedback and sample materials.
- Supervisor: J. Allan
- CS383 Artificial Intelligence, Teaching Assistant
Fall 2006, University of Massachusetts Amherst - Aided students in office hours.
- Prepared and taught 16% of classroom lectures.
- Wrote homework and exam questions and graded coursework.
- Sample materials.
- Supervisor: D. Jensen
- EM104, Graphical Communications, Teaching Assistant
Fall 1997, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology - Aided students during lab sessions.
- Graded coursework.
- Supervisor: C. Buckley
- HTML and Web Design, Instructor
Fall 1996, Alliance Public Schools Community Education - Created syllabus for an introductory web design course.
- Geared for students with no programming experience.
- Centered around a design project.
- Supervisor: L. Sherlock
Invited Lectures and Seminars
- "Leading Effective Discussion Sections in Science Labs," [slides] University of Massachusetts Center for Teaching Teaching Assistant Orientation
August 2007 - "VIDI: Helping the Blind to See by Teaching Computers to Read," Interdepartmental Graduate Student Colloqium Series. University of Massachusetts Amherst
May 2007
Guest Lectures
- "Information Geometry and Free Energy," Advanced Machine Learning
Spring 2005 - "Recognition with Wavelets and Boosting" and "Discriminative Markov Fields,", Statistical Object Recognition
Fall 2003 - "Audio-Visual Sound Separation," Statistical Information Extraction
Spring 2003 - "Selective Perception," Hierarchical Probabilistic Models for AI
Spring 2002 - "Nonlinear Diffusion Scalespace," Computer Vision Topics
Spring 2002
Student Feedback
Students are the ultimate and most important consumers of my pedagogical efforts, so I regularly solicit input from them, and take their feedback seriously. For more on what they have to say and what I have learned from it, read on about student feedback"Very approachable and willing to work through problems with you. He didn't just give you answers, he asked questions to get you to reason through the problem logically."
-- CMPSCI 187 Data Structures, Spring 2007"Awesome TA, always willing to help"
-- CMPSCI 383 Artificial Intelligence, Fall 2006"Section leader was inspiring"
-- CMPSCI 187 Data Structures, Spring 2007-- Anonymous student feedback
Teaching Development
In addition to participating in the UMass Center for Teaching's TA Orientation (first as a participant, and ultimately as a workshop presenter), I have recently completed their Teaching Documentation Program.
This program equips participants with teaching theory, a teaching assessment, and the development of improvement practices. In particular, I learned many things about teaching and learning in a course called Introduction to College Teaching. An in-class observation of one of my lectures by a Center for Teaching staff member has also helped me focus my improvement efforts. Finally, reflecting on particular class activities (like the one described in my teaching materials) has helped to find strengths and weaknesses in my various teaching styles.
The entire process has been informative and has prepared me to learn as much from my students as vice-versa. The following is a formal letter documenting my participation in the program.
Teaching Documentation Program, Letter from the Center for Teaching
Example Materials
Courses of Interest
Other Material
- "Risk Communication" Course Proposal
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 2000Written as part of a course on Ethics in Human Communication, this course proposal was geared for the Humanities & Social Sciences Department.