Teaching Experience: I was a teaching assistant for Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, Earth Science for Education Majors, and Physical Geology in the Geology and Geophysics Department at the University of Wyoming. As a teaching assistant for Sedimentology and Stratigraphy in the Fall of 2010, I was charged with creating innovative lab exercises for students, as well as leading two field trips that helped demonstrate key course concepts, resulting in very positive feedback. While serving as a teaching assistant for Earth Science for Education Majors in Spring 2012, I learned to effectively communicate science to an audience that may not possess a scientific vocabulary or even necessarily understand basic science. Finally, I was a teaching assistant for an introductory Physical Geology course for three lab sections. This course was a broad earth system science survey targeted to freshmen, covering all scopes of the earth system. I based the lab sections with short lectures introducing each topic in a way that allowed students to feel comfortable getting started on and completing the lab. I encouraged questions, but also posed questions to the students to get them to think critically about important lab concepts. My teaching evaluation scores were consistently above the University and Departmental averages.
Invited Guest Lectures: 6) Past Climates and Climate Change, Causes of Climatic Changes over the last 1,000 years - UW-Madison, 12/05/17 5) Glacial Geology, Late Pleistocene Climate Change and Milankovitch Cycles - UW-Madison, 4/18/17 4) Global Change: A Geological Perspective, Reconstructing Hydrologic Variability - Univ. of Wyoming, 11/19/15 3) Global Change: A Geological Perspective, Late Pleistocene Climate Evolution - Univ. of Wyoming, 11/7/15 2) Quaternary Ecology Seminar, Using a Bayesian Framework to Generate Age Models for Geologic Archives - Univ. of Wyoming, 10/7/14 1) Stratigraphy and Sedimentology, Sedimentary Basins - Univ. of Wyoming, 11/3/10
Mentoring Experience: I have also routinely mentored undergraduates on research projects. I served repeatedly as a mentor for both the Ronald B. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship program and the Summer Research Apprenticeship Program, which provide opportunities for students from under-represented backgrounds and first-generation college students. I helped students design their projects, taught them research approaches, helped them with data analyses, and guided them through the preparation of presentations for conferences such as UW Undergraduate Research Day and Geological Society of America meetings. Many of these students went on to pursue Master’s and Ph.D. programs. Based on these experiences, I look forward to working with students on various projects in the future.