Engineer by Trade
Educator by Heart
Teaching Experience
Virginia Tech
Foundations of Engineering I
(Fall 2015 | Spring 2016)
This is the first course in a two semester series for first year engineering students at Virginia Tech. Throughout this class students learn concepts about enginering, teamwork, Matlab coding, robotics, and factors that impact the design process.
In the Fall offering of the course I had the opportunity to lead two sections of thirty students twice a week. In the Spring offering I led three sections of thirty students once a week. During both offerings I was tasked with introducing students
to Matlab basics, engineering problem solving, and technical communication skills.
The line following robot (video above) was my favorite project to teach. It required the students to incorporate their programming and problem solving skills to create a really cool product.
Michigan Tech
ME Practice I
(Fall 2014 | Spring 2015)
This is the first course in a three course series for Mechanical Engineering majors at Michigan Technological University. This course takes students through testing for mechanical processes, team work, manufacturing processes, data acquisition, Matlab, and reverse engineering. During each semester offering I had
the opportunity to lead three sections of fifteen students each, once a week. I really enjoyed the amount of hands-on activities the students had the opportunity to work through. The chess piece (left) was a really interesting assignment. It required the students to use several different tools on a CNC lathe and their programming skills to have the program run without the need for manual tool changes.
Integrated Design and Manufacturing
(Fall 2013 |Spring 2014)
This course was taught before being replaced by the ME Practice I course. This course was focused more heavily on mechanical testing and manufacturing processes. Students manufactured parts using powder metallurgy, extrusion, lathes, mills, boring, and punching.
The disks (left) were produced by students during our week on powder metallurgy. The students were tasked to create
disks using sprinkles to show grain formation and lead to learn about hardness testing. I chose this image because I have always enjoyed allowing students to learn through exploration. I had a student who asked what would happen if they used lead and sprinkles together. the result was the larger disk at the top of the image. This student's experiment allowed the opportunity to have a discussion and debate about the possible causes for the lead surrounding the sprinkles and the "waves" on the outer portion. The debate ended with the students agreeing that the likely cause was friction, leading to a much better understanding than the previous labs.