Teaching
Party of why I'm pursuing a career as an academic is that I love teaching and sharing my excitement for mathematics with students. My early experiences in teaching were very much in the mode of how I had been taught (lecture). However, through my involvement with the Georgia Tech Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, I have come to prefer a learner-centered, active approach to teaching. This section of my website collects materials such as course policies, tests, projects, and class activities/handouts from the courses I have taught. My blog Partially Ordered Thoughts (on hiatus while working in a research-only postdoc) also documents some of my teaching experiences.
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Teaching Philosophy Statement
Mathematics is an exciting and beautiful subject to me. As a teacher of mathematics, I endeavor to share my enthusiasm with my students every time I step into the classroom. How I approach teaching has evolved over time to become more learner-centered, leading to improved student performance. Outstanding teaching involves many components, and this statement highlights topics that I believe are important and illustrates them with examples. These topics include shared responsibility between students and faculty for student learning, the importance of effective feedback, and ways to teach students of diverse backgrounds and abilities.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 September 2011 12:38 |
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Twice at Georgia Tech I taught the precalculus course. This is the lowest mathematics course offered by the Institute. Many of the students in the class are student-athletes. The others are a mixture of students who qualified to enroll in the calculus sequence, tried it, and failed and students who did not have the appropriate math SAT score (550) to start in Calculus I. Course materials from the two times I taught the course are available below. In Spring 2007, I had 36 students and one teaching assistant, while in Fall 2009, I had 45 students and two teaching assistants.
MATH 1113/2804—Spring 2007
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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 September 2011 12:40 |
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Georgia Tech's calculus sequence is more accelerated than at most universities. In the first semester, students are taught limits, differentiation, integration (including techniques and applications), and sequences. The second semester covers series, numerical integration, l'Hopital's rule, improper integrals, and linear algebra for scientists and engineers. My first experience as instructor of record was for a 126-student, first-semester calculus course in Fall 2006. As part of this, I supervised three new undergraduate teaching assistants.
MATH 1501—Fall 2006
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 14 April 2010 19:30 |
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At Georgia Tech, applied combinatorics is a junior-level course intended to introduce students to fundamental techniques in enumeration, discrete structions, and algorithms and optimization. In a typical section, about two-thirds of the students are computer science majors. The remaining students are a mixture of computer engineering, industrial and systems engineering, discrete mathematics, and applied mathematics majors. (A very small number of students may be math minors from other science and engineering majors.) I am in the process of writing a textbook for this course with William T. Trotter.
Matrials from the two times I taught the course are below. In Fall 2008, my course enrolled 34 students, while in Spring 2010, I had 65 students.
MATH 3012—Fall 2008
MATH 3012—Spring 2010
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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 September 2011 12:50 |
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Teaching