Teaching Methods

As an educator my goal is to ensure students have the ideas and tools to inspire critical thinking. Giving students a way to continuously generate new and insightful ideas and questions generated by challenging, understanding and exploring ideas central to their own goals. 

I often highlight two stories related to neutrinos, as it's a lesson my undergrad advisor taught me. One team rushed to publish a result which contradicted decades of prior observational data, and well tested theoretical frameworks, unfortunately the source of the signal in question was that of faulty equipment. However another group also made such an observation on a different property of neutrinos, what they found did not agree with theory, but rather than rushing to publish they stepped back, collaborated and confirmed with other groups, eventually they would publish a paper that overturned a theoretical framework because the other collaborates observed the same results.

This is my motivation behind my teaching methods. Using project based learning and the socratic method I can ensure students work together to solve complex problems examining ideas through using first principals approaches. My hope is to have students question the methods they are employing, ensuring they are not just fitting a line to data, but asking does the data fit, and am I using the right framework.

My goal is to employ a flipped class room model. Where I deliver content through lectures and applications that students can review on their own. This way during the class sessions I can ensure my focus is working with the students, ensuring they are asking and exploring the right questions, and further more, its absolutely critical that BOTH students and professor are not passive listeners, but rather collaborative partners.