Introduction

Throughout my career in higher education, I have taken great pleasure in facilitating the learning and holistic personal growth of students through excellence in teaching and a strong commitment to service. As a graduate student at Georgia Tech, I served as an educator in a wide variety of roles: in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, I was a laboratory instructor, teaching assistant, guest lecturer, and instructor of record. Furthermore, through the Institute for Data Engineering and Science at Georgia Tech, I served as a co-organizer, guest lecturer, and lead instructional assistant for three annual workshops in Data Science and Scientific Computing. The most recent such workshop was partially supported through a successfully funded TRIPODS + X educational grant provided by the United States National Science Foundation, for which I was a contributor. Informed by these experiences, I have found that the most effective teacher is the self. As an educator, I therefore seek to combine learner-centered instruction and an open, class-wide dialogue to facilitate an inclusive and vibrant learning community where all students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning. Based on both quantitative and qualitative feedback (quoted in italics), I have found that students thrive in my classroom environment. In a future faculty appointment, I will be elated to teach a variety of courses for students in the sciences and health majors, including (but not limited to) introductory chemistry for first-year students and upper-division physical chemistry. Additionally, I would be highly interested in developing elective courses in my own areas of expertise, including computational chemistry and data science for chemists.

Goals for Student Development

I design each of my courses specifically to help my students advance in three major areas: (i) the acquisition of content knowledge, (ii) the development of new and transferable skills, and (iii) the cultivation of an attitude where students are excited by the opportunity to learn and grow. My primary goal as an educator is for each of my students to develop this combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) in my course(s), because together, these KSAs provide a firm foundation from which students can embark on their own journeys to fulfill their potential and accomplish their goals.

While each course is unique, there are several examples of KSAs which I believe to be universally important, including: * the knowledge of and skills practicing the art of problem solving * the knowledge of and skill of practicing metacognition, i.e., “learning how to learn,” * the skill of effective collaboration with peers, * the skill of effective communication to an audience of peers, * the skills and attitudes of resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity, and * the attitude of a love of learning.

These KSAs are incorporated into my student learning outcomes for each of my courses, and the learning outcomes for each lesson also encourage student progress towards these KSAs. To do this, I employ a “backwards design” approach, where all assignments, activities, and assessments support the goals for the course by design. Furthermore, assessment in my courses is actively used as a tool for learning, not just as a summative measure of student acumen or as an obstacle placed in the way of student advancement. Therefore, not only do students in my courses gain an appreciation of the subject being taught, but learn to love learning itself: not just to get a grade, but for its own sake.

Teaching Methods

In order to maximize students’ successful progress towards course learning outcomes and KSAs, I structure each lesson into chunks of material which each benefit from the utilization of evidence-based practices in teaching. These include active learn- ing strategies and classroom assessment techniques which engage student diversity and foster metacognition while reinforcing new concepts, each of which are described in detail below.

Active Learning Strategies

Students learn best when they are actively engaged with the material, instead of playing a passive vessel for some “sage on the stage” to pour their knowledge into. I therefore leverage active learning strategies during each class which require students to be active participants in the learning environment, which can be employed in a wide range of class sizes, and can be adapted to be accessible to any level of student. One such strategy that I repeatedly utilize is “think-pair-share,” in which students reflect on a question or problem individually (think) before discussing their thoughts with a partner or among a small group (pair) and finally communicating their conclusions to the wider class (share). This technique lowers the barrier to classroom participation in all class sizes, and I have seen first-hand how it engages even students who are extremely reluctant to answer questions in a traditional lecture setting.

Student Assessment and Metacognition

Between chunks of discussion in the lesson, I always measure student understand- ing using formative assessments (FAs). These low-stakes assessments measure stu- dent understanding in real-time, allowing both students and instructor to reflect on the quality of learning and what changes could more effectively ensure mastery. In addition to low-stakes FAs, I firmly believe that regular, medium-stakes quizzes, homeworks, and projects provide a more realistic barometer to measure student understanding than only a few high-stakes examinations. When combining low- and medium-stakes assessments in this manner, the focus in my classroom remains on using assessment as a tool for learning, rather than an obstacle which must be over- come. This approach to metacognition is introduced from the very beginning of my courses, and I encourage students to regularly reflect on how their approach to learning affects the quality of their learning experience.

In addition to leveraging the quantitative results of assessment to gauge student progress towards knowledge- and skills-centered learning outcomes, I also regularly solicit qualitative student feedback about their attitudes surrounding their learning. To do this, my students write a ‘minute paper’ at the end of each lesson, comprising one to three sentences focused on their experience that day, in response to questions including “What went well today?”, “What could be improved next time?”, “How can I, as the instructor, better serve them?”, and “What could they, as learners, do differently to better take advantage of class time?”, among others. In this manner, I prompt additional self-reflection which can be metacognitively leveraged by my students. This approach directs student attention to the quality of their interaction with the content and skills being learned, elevating students to owners of their learning, rather than simply reducing them to their grade alone. This further allows for students’ attitudes to shift towards one of a love of learning for its own sake, which is among my primary goals for every one of my students.

Bringing the Research Laboratory into the Classroom

As a quantum chemist, I enjoy a rich, constantly evolving field which continues to expand in predictive power that can be leveraged directly within the classroom itself to clarify and illustrate abstract concepts. In General Chemistry I at Georgia Tech, students perform a computational laboratory “experiment” to explore how valence shell electron pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory can justify molec- ular structure based on the electron density (or electrostatic potential) for a set of small molecules. Since atomic and molecular structure are some of the more abstract concepts discussed in first- year chemistry courses, students understandably find them challenging. By being able to directly see the electron density for a molecule, however, VSEPR theory and molecular structure are made much more tangible. In my experience, this exercise removes student apprehension and anxiety surrounding these concepts, allowing their natural curiosity to flourish as they explore for them- selves the relationship between electron density and molecular structure.

Making concepts more tangible through direct computational examination is by no means unique to the general chemistry classroom, however. From the description of protein-ligand binding in physiological conditions to predicting spectroscopic signatures of astronomically relevant chemical species, computation can be leveraged in nearly any chemistry classroom. Towards this end, I have been a member of the Psi4Education initiative for several years, which is comprised of faculty members from institutions around the nation who are all motivated to include computational chemistry at every level of the undergraduate curriculum by leveraging the open-source PSI4 quantum chemistry package. In addition to my involvement with the Psi4Education initiative, I am also among the core developers of the Psi4NumPy project, which provides a framework for rapid development, reference implementation, and educational materials for for the implementation of several of the most common quantum chemistry methods. While this content is typically presented only at the graduate level, Psi4NumPy is accessible even at the upper-division and advanced undergraduate levels.

In order to leverage computation in the undergraduate curriculum, computing resources must be configured to perform these computations and be accessible to students. At Georgia Tech, where ∼1500 first-year chemistry students each perform geometry optimizations and compute electrostatic potential maps for a dozen molecules during a single week, we employ the WebMO software to drive and visualize the results of PSI4 quantum chemistry computations performed on computing resources within the Sherrill Group. As the group’s Systems Administrator, these servers have been my sole responsibility to maintain. There- fore, I have played a role in all levels of the VSEPR experiment: I am a contributor to PSI4, the software performing the quantum chemistry computations; I built and actively administrate the machines upon which the computations are running; I have contributed to the design of the lab itself (and several others like it); and I have facilitated students performing this laboratory exercise. I would be thrilled to leverage these experiences to provide similarly illustrative and transformative educational opportunities for my future students University students at all levels.

Creating a Community for Learning

Throughout my academic journey, I have seen first-hand the adverse impacts that imposter syndrome, anxiety, depression, burnout, chronic stress, and other mental health crises can have on students’ ability to learn and their quality of life in general. From withdrawal from classroom participation and/or from relationships with their peers to debilitating panic when faced with a high- stakes examination, these crises can sabotage student success from the very beginning. As some- one who has struggled with anxiety and depression, I am keenly aware of the adversity that stu- dents who experience these and similar challenges can face. I therefore take active steps to foster an “opposites” environment in my classroom, where we seek to replace these feelings with their antitheses: replacing isolation and guardedness with vulnerability and openness, the fear of fail- ure with the excitement of common exploration, the paralysis of anxiety with the active bravery of embracing adversity. To do this, I begin by modeling vulnerability and openness about my own struggles with these challenges from the very first classroom meeting. I often use this method of self-humanization to demonstrate for my students that we are all just people, and that we are united – rather than divided – by the seemingly disparate challenges that we each face. From this point of common understanding, we move forward together as a community of peers who are all seeking to learn and grow through shared experience.

In the same way that I engage directly with issues of mental illness, I also take a direct approach to celebrate student diversity in all its forms by beginning each course with a brief biographical introduction of myself, focusing not on my academic pedigree but rather on who I am (a learner, husband, and friend), where I come from (a small town in rural Northwestern Pennsylvania), and what I want to be when I grow up (a guitarist). As a first assignment, I always ask my students to provide similar details, including their preferred names, gender pronouns, hobbies, interests, and life aspirations. In this way, I can quickly build a connection with each of my students, as well as learning about their backgrounds so that I may better tailor my classroom ap- proach to engage with their prior knowledge and experiences. Furthermore, I consistently highlight the scientific contributions of members of underrepresented groups, in order to affirm students’ scientific identity and sense of belonging. It is critically important to provide all students, especially those from underrepresented groups and first-generation college students, with role models who also share their ethnicity and gender identity. In upper-division courses like Physical Chemistry II, for example, I place particular focus on Andres Cisneros, Emily Carter, and Laura Gagliardi, among others, to showcase how these scientists have made central contributions to the field of computational and theoretical chemistry.

In addition to my efforts to cultivate relationships with my students inside the classroom, I will implement an open-door policy as a faculty member to provide students with a welcoming, safe space to encourage student-faculty interactions outside the classroom. I care deeply for my students’ holistic personal, social, financial, and intellectual well-being and the well-being of every campus community. As such, I will do my part as a member of that community to reach out to and aid students exhibiting distress by advertising key campus services. I would also seek to personally mentor 2-4 students each academic year, either through established programs or one which I would seek to implement.

Faculty Assessment and Improvement

In the same way that I ask my students to view assessment as a tool for learning, I too utilize results from student assessments to improve my own approach to better facilitate their learning. Regular low- to medium-stakes assessments offer a unique opportunity for student and faculty alike to engage dynamically with the learning process, and adjust course if necessary. This may be as simple as changing focus mid-lesson to clear up student misconceptions or as far-reaching as reorganizing topics or units to better engage with students’ prior knowledge. Furthermore, I also write a minute-paper after each class to reflect on what I felt went well or not and how I may approach things differently in the future.

In addition to the insightful results provided by student assessment, I also solicit anonymous early semester (week 3), mid semester (during week 7) and late semester (during week 12) student feedback. The results of these feedbacks can be used to motivate potentially drastic changes to my approach if necessary, which has already made a profound impact on my skill as an educator. For example, the very first time I taught my self-designed course Mathematical Methods in Chemical Physics, early-semester feedback revealed that I spent too much time focusing on fine-grained detail of how to perform a particular task, without motivating why the task itself was necessary. Since receiving that feedback, I have adopted a historical approach to introducing technical concepts, where I first introduce a problem or challenge and describe the human element of discovery which solved or addressed it, before discussing the details of how to employ the solution. Finally, I utilize the collection of all feedback received throughout the semester, in addition to the contents of my final course evaluations, to refine my approach before the next time I teach. In doing so, I am continually engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning, as I strive to be the best facilitator of student learning that I can be.