Academic Resources

Background

For the first thirteen years of my career, I was a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During that time, I mentored over twenty undergraduate, M.S., and Ph.D. students in research, developed and taught seven courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and (for ten of those thirteen years) served as Program Chair, in which I initiated and oversaw multiple initiatives to improve student outcomes. I hope that the resources I developed during my time in academia remain useful to students across the nation and world.

Student Resources

I maintain several webpages providing information regarding undergraduate and graduate scholarships, student research opportunities, applying to graduate school, and post-doctoral fellowships. Links to these resources may be found below. Please feel free to share these resources and contact me with any corrections and/or additions.

Student Research Internships | Undergraduate Scholarships
Graduate Fellowships and Post-Docs | Applying to Graduate School

Teaching Philosophy

Students flourish in academic environments when they know that those in charge – their instructors, advisors, and mentors – care deeply about them as people, their well-being, and their learning. Students are not automatons wired just to learn, but rather, they bring their unique identities, financial and psychological hardships, motivations, and preparation levels to the academic setting, all of which affect their engagement. This is particularly true of students from historically excluded backgrounds, who often do not have someone to whom they can turn to help in navigating college and adulthood. Consequently, my teaching and mentoring approach was foremost rooted in nurturing an inclusive, supportive academic community.

This inclusive, supportive academic community enabled the teaching and mentoring methods I used to have the best-possible chance at facilitating students’ academic success. These methods were grounded in developing students’ ability to critically evaluate ideas and creatively apply knowledge to reinforce existing and develop altogether new understanding. I leveraged insights from pedagogy and human cognition in designing my courses to help students achieve these goals.

The courses I taught were centered in Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. This started with organizing each course around a small number of specific learning objectives that provide a framework around which topics are organized (rather than the inverse). Achieving these outcomes, however, requires students to first have a solid foundation at the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, specifically remembering and understanding. Thus, I intentionally designed courses using a scaffolded approach, limiting my assumptions about students’ prior learning to ensure we begin on solid ground, then explicitly connecting each new concept to those that preceded it in their studies. My courses emphasized repeated practice through low-stakes assessments and assignments to facilitate deep learning and give me multiple opportunities to assess when a concept was not resonating with students.