Teaching philosophy
An ideal undergraduate program involves more than just coursework. It engages students in a community of scholarship. College education provides opportunities to interact with faculty and other students outside the classroom.
My position at Marshall has given me the opportunity to teach many wonderful students. I have supervised numerous capstone projects and three master's theses, along with a number of independent study classes.
Beyond Marshall, I have been active in the Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) community. Inquiry-Based Learning is a kind of active learning that is supported by research and adopted by professors worldwide. IBL classes allow students to engage in meaningful activities, discover facts, and create meaning under the guidance of skilled instructors. IBL classes typically have much less direct lecture than non-IBL classes. In 2018–2019 I received a fellowship from the Center for Teaching and Learning to study IBL teaching in more depth.
Past teaching
I teach mathematics and computer science. I have taught numerous courses from freshman through graduate level. Some of the courses I have taught at Marshall include:
- STA 150 - Foundations of Statistics
- MTH 220 - Discrete Structures (for computing majors)
- Calculus 1, 2, and 3
- MTH 300 - Intro to Higher Math
- MTH 440 / 635 - Combinatorics and Graph Theory
- MTH 630 & 631 - Topology
- MTH 650 - Real Variables (Measure Theory)
- CS 105 - Exploring the World with Computing
- CIT 163 - Introductory Programming - C++
- CS 620 - Applied Algorithms
I have also taught several special topics classes, including:
- Computability Theory
- Topology and the Stone-Cech Compactification
- Mathematicians on Film, co-taught with Walter Squire
- Hilbert's 10th Problem
Before coming to Marshall, I taught at the University of Michigan, Appalachian State University, and Penn State University. I also saw many examples of excellent teaching during my undergraduate education at Western Carolina University.