Students build egg drop projects.

Teaching with Freedom Summer Collegiate in Meridian, Mississipi, summer 2022. Students debate the merits of various design choices for their final egg drop project for my class on Gravity.

Students skyping with Bernie Bates, faculty at the University of Puget Sound. Dr. Bates was one of several college professors we spoke and corresponded with over the course of the class, preparing these college-bound students to interact with facult…

Students skyping with Bernie Bates, faculty at the University of Puget Sound during summer 2019. Dr. Bates was one of several college professors we spoke and corresponded with over the course of the class, preparing these college-bound students to interact with faculty members in the future.

Teaching & Mentorship

As Earth scientists, we ask and answer important questions about the Earth system, advocate for policy interventions, and do our work across the Earth. Thoughtful and effective teaching and mentoring prepares students from a range of backgrounds to engage with the world quantitatively and develops the next generation of Earth scientists.

Freedom Summer Collegiate

I am a teacher with Freedom Summer Collegiate, a program that organizes advanced summer classes for college credit to high school students in Mississippi who face significant obstacles on the path to college. I’ve taught with FSC for four years now and am a member of their Teacher Advisory Board. My courses are designed to give students practice and exposure to unfamiliar math and data analysis tasks, while asking interesting questions about the natural world.

MIT

At MIT, I taught as a teaching assistant for two semesters of sedimentology. I also helped to design and was the teaching assistant for MIT EAPS’ first iteration of a Great Papers course for incoming graduate students. I’ve taught in the field in Death Valley, Yellowstone, Bermuda, Namibia and Newfoundland.

Mentoring

I’ve been lucky to work with some amazing students who are now off in the wider world doing great things:

  • Chiza Mwinde (Smith College, now at UChicago)

  • Jocelyn Reahl (Wellesley College, now at UC Boulder)

  • Andrew Cummings (MIT, now at MIT for PhD)

  • Iona Baillie (masters student at St Andrews, co-advised with Dr. Catherine Rose, now at Johns Hopkins for a PhD)

At UW, I have the ongoing good fortune of working with my PhD students: