CHEM 452PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY FOR BIOCHEMISTS (I)
When I had first taken general chemistry, thermochemistry had been my favorite subject. Going into the class I had been told two things: 1) The class was hard and 2) Dr. Keller was one of the best professors in the entire department and potentially the university. Here, I got lucky by having taken CHEM145 in freshman year. The first bit of material was very similar and I understood the introductory concepts fairly well from the intensive first year course. In addition, many of the concepts at the beginning were repeated from CHEM145. This little bit of familiarity helped me as I grew used to studying for the class. As I had been informed, I found Dr. Keller to be phenomenal person and considerate of her students. She helped students work through any parts of the class that they did not understand and worked to explain things in a variety of ways. She also told us honest experiences from her undergraduate and graduate year, emphasizing that a successful end to the story does not mean that it went smoothly. Studying for midterms was also very difficult, however. To (essentially) prepare us for graduate school, she would give us 100+ practice problems without answers and we collaborated on a Google Drive with peers to reach the correct conclusion. Hopefully, should I successfully become a professor, I can replicate some of her methods of teaching that I found fantastic. In addition, my artifact is the graded exam 2 from the class. Entropy-related problems had always been particularly difficult for me to wrap my head around but Dr. Keller's style of teaching was very effective and my test is able to show that.
bioc 450HONORS BIOCHEMISTRY: VISUALIZING BIOCHEMICAL CONCEPTS
BIOC 450 differs from BIOC 440 partially in the idea that it is seminar-style but also due to its method of testing. Rather than a few midterms and a final, we had multiple (almost weekly) quizzes, midterm and final papers (including a graphic abstract) examining an article from literature, a final presentation, and a final exam. The class itself was very different from my previous STEM classes. Each class would be approximately 50% lecture on the previous night’s reading and 50% worksheets to apply the topics. It was a good way to actually understand the topics rather than memorization. My artifact is the midterm paper I wrote for the class. For the assignment I had analyzed a paper and created a graphical abstract for the information. This was the first graphical abstract I had really created and I was very proud of the final product. I also had more time on my hands during the midterm week than the final week so the paper analysis itself was better than that of the final.
pHYS 123WAVES
My previous experience in PHYS122 had caused my to abhor the class and so I went into PHYS123 with a sense of foreboding. I was pleasantly surprised by Dr. Majumdar's approachability and willingness to answer long questions - both over class and by email. In PHYS122 I had slowly gotten more and more lost over the course of the quarter partially because I learned slower than my peers in the quiz and lab sections and fell behind as they sped through the material. To prevent that from happening again, I made sure to complete assignments well ahead of time and did my best to complete all of the practice material early so that I could ask questions of Dr. Majumdar. The artifact I have attached is the second exam. While my score on the exam was a little lower than the first, I was able to combine the lecture and quiz section materials well enough to solve a specific quiz section example question more effectively using lecture section material. I was proud of this success, even though I did not initially receive points and had to request points back.
eDUC401PRACTICUM IN COMMUNITY SERVICE ACTIVITY (C.L.U.E. TUTORING)
At then end of Spring 2019 I applied for a job as a CLUE Chemistry tutor and was accepted starting the 2019-2020 school year. During this first quarter as a CLUE tutor all the new CLUE tutors took a class that was very beneficial in understanding how to teach and in preparation of potential situations. At CLUE we are partially teaching people how to learn the material and find resources to help, along with the material itself, so the course was definitely a good addition to CLUE training. At the end of the course we each wrote up a proposal for a potential improvement to CLUE, which I have uploaded as my artifact. In it, I detail the problems with the current Canvas access system and how I would ensure that all the tutors can access the material needed for exam reviews in order to best benefit the students being tutored.
To Winter 2020 |
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