Teaching
I have been (and continue to be) deeply involved with teaching at the University of Michigan on many different levels. These range from holding discussion sections
as an undergraduate Teaching Assistant, to overseeing senior design projects as a Graduate Student Instructor, to leading the Graduate Student Mentor program within
the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). I have helped to train instructors in the College
of Engineering by providing seminars on topics such as "Teaching Problem Solving", "Holding Office Hours", and "Managing Student Teams". In the summer of 2006, I
was named a Michigan Teaching Fellow for these accomplishments and for my participation in the nationally-recognized Preparing Future Faculty Seminar.
| Lead GSM | Fall 2006, Winter 2007 |
 |
In addition to the responsibilities of the GSM (see previous appointment below), I am working with the Coordinators for EGSITT (Mary Piontek) and the
Engineering GSM Program (Chad Hershock) to:
- oversee the EGSITT concurrent sessions and practice teaching sessions,
- coordinate the EGSM program,
- maintain the CTools EGSM site and other EGSM files,
- coordinate the EGSM biweekly reports,
- conduct the survey of all GSIs who receive EGSM consultations and prepare the end-of-term EGSM report for the Assistant Dean for Graduate Education, and
- conduct the end-of-term GSI survey and prepare the GSI survey report for the ADGE.
|
|
|
| Graduate Student Mentor | Fall 2005, Winter 2006 |
My GSM
Info Sheet |
The Graduate Student Mentors (GSMs) at the College of Engineering are a group
of experienced Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) who serve as consultants and teaching mentors to the rest of the GSI population in the College of Engineering.
There are typically ten GSMs, with each one being accountable for 20 to 30 Engineering GSIs.
The GSM Program in the College of Engineering was founded on the belief that developing GSIs could benefit from the unique guidance, support, and experience that peer
mentors provide. While all GSIs have access to mentoring from their advisors or other professors in their department, the peer mentor relationship provides a safe
venue for exploration of teaching strategies and discussion of teaching initiatives and issues. GSMs in the College of Engineering are trained to mentor in a
facilitative way, a model that appeals to their own sense of their role, and approaches the collegial style of supervision preferred by most GSIs. Additionally, the
nature of the peer mentor-mentee interaction is such that it creates a reciprocity that benefits both individuals becoming a valuable learning experience for the GSMs
themselves. |
|
|
| Graduate Student Instructor (EECS 497) | Fall 2004, Spring 2005 |
|
EECS 497 is a senior design course in which undergraduate students form groups of 3 to 4 members, and undertake a large self-directed software engineering project.
As a Graduate Student Instructor, I met individually with each student group on a bi-weekly basis to ensure that all aspects of their projects - from technical
problems to teamwork issues - were kept under control. With the help of TechComm 496 instructor Rod Johnson, I also provided feedback on a variety of documentation,
including Software Design Specifications (SDS) and Software Requirement Specifications (SRS).
|
|
| Mentor, Michigan Mentorship Program | Summer 2004 |
|
The Michigan Mentorship Program provides promising high school students an opportunity to explore selected areas of study with UM graduate students. In particular, I
worked one-on-one with an extremely talented high school junior on several projects in the Java programming language. Early lessons focused on basic procedural
programming principles, while later lessons touched on more advanced concepts such as object-orientation.
|
|
| Undergraduate Teaching Assistant (EECS 281) | Fall 2002, Winter 2003 |
During my junior year at Michigan, I had the rare opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant for EECS 281: Data Structures & Algorithms, a course in
which many of the fundamental concepts in Computer Science are taught. My responsibilities included...
- leading two hour-long discussion sections each week,
- preparing homework and exam questions,
- holding office hours, and
- conducting review sessions
... along with an assortment of several administrative tasks. In the Fall 2002 term, I also played the role of Project TA, developing project specifications,
test cases, solution code, and so-called "autograder" scripts that provided students with immediate (but limited) feedback on the speed and correctness of their
code.
|
|
|
