Teaching Philosophy
My main goal as a teacher is to provide my students with the tools necessary to continue to learn and lead fulfilling lives. These tools include problem-solving skills, power of observation, self-discipline, and the desire to learn. In general I try to satisfy the different ways people learn by using a combination of approaches such as giving notes, requiring reading/writing, and employing hands-on learning.
I also think it is important to 'stay with the times.' Too often teachers try to stick with old teaching materials, and this can be boring or dry for new generations.
Implementing technology, such as phone apps or video, or relating material to pop culture is often fun and useful for students.
However, we should not forget some old tools. For example, there are some neat tricks that can only be done with an overhead projector. Ask me about a nifty way to show cosmological redshift!
Of course, regardless of how class is taught, student feedback is the best judge of what works and what does not work.
What works can even change on a semester timescale, so I find mid-semester evaluations important!
Undergraduate Student Advising with me as Primary Advisor
Kimberly (2012): Kimberly studied how high-mass young stellar objects evolved through time by comparing their embedded enivornments to their vibrational diatomic hydrogen line fluxes.
Oscar (2016): Oscar analyzed the performance of the SMA MASSES survey (discussed briefly here). He also investigated how the width of protostellar outflows changes as a protostar evolves. He presented his results at 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society
Sean (2016): Sean used MASSES data to investigate how the protostellar envelopes evolves through time.
Patience (2017): Patience used MASSES data to investigate how the protostellar envelope evolves through time.
Bridget (2017): Bridget used MASSES data to see if we can accurately approximate the disk mass of young Class 0/I protostars using unresolved (~1000 AU) observations. Turns out we can! Publication: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ApJ...873...54A/abstract. She also presented her results at the 231st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Lyn (2018): Lyn used clustering algorithms to study high-mass young stellar objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Patrick (2019): Patrick scripted a Python code using the pandas package to analyze MALT90 data.
Daniel (2019): Daniel used MASSES data to investigate how the protostellar envelope evolves through time. He is hopeful to submit his paper this December. He will present his results at the 235th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Ana (2019): Ana fitted models of magnetic field morphologies using Python.
Outreach
With respect to science, the public is particularly interested in astronomy. Astronomy typically does not make money for an industry and is usually funded by the government. Besides advancing science, some of our main 'products' are giving outreach to the public and educating young scientists. Conveying importance of science to public is key!
Besides press articles, I am also involved myself into the SAO Latino Initiative Program.
This program is a 3 month summer internship program that allows for students from underrepresented minority groups to get hands-on experience with research in astronomy.
I have now been a part of the program for two summers (2016 and 2017), and I have met some really smart and enthusiastic students.
As part of the SAO Latino Initiative Program, I taught the students some Python for a course. A Jupyter python notebook of a lecture of mine can be found here (right click to save). Student interns from all advisors came to me for their Python and Linux questions!