• Physical Chemistry I (Statistical Thermodynamics & Kinetics)
• Physical Chemistry Laboratory I & II
• General Chemistry
• General Chemistry Laboratory I & II
• Structure, Dynamics, and Synthesis II (Superchem -- advanced topics in group theory and PChem)
• Advanced Spectroscopy
• Structural Biology Journal Club
• Independent Research in Chemistry
• Through the above courses, I have developed new laboratories for Advanced Spectroscopy, Physical Chemistry Laboratory I, and General Chemistry I

Computational Science & Modeling

My primary curricular goal at the moment is to encouraging growth of Computational Science and Modeling (CSM) throughout the science curriculum. Through my role as the CSM Supervisor, I oversee the CSM Laboratory and the CSM Facilitator, which strive to enable all science faculty to incorporate aspects of CSM into their courses. We want it to be as easy as possible for faculty to develop units for lecture and laboratory courses that give students hands-on experience with CSM tools appropriate to their discipline.

Prior to taking on the CSM Supervisor duties, I began development of the interdisciplinary Computational Science and Modeling Emphasis, which is now headed by Aaron Cinzori (Math) and Ryan McFall (Computer Science). The CSM program is being developed as an emphasis because it is critical that computational scientists have experience in computation, but are also experts in some discipline. Without the foundation of sound disciplinary training one cannot successfully apply even the most powerful computational tool effectively. Thus, the CSM program enables students to accrue both the complete tools and language of their home discipline as well as a strong set of experience applying the tools of CSM.

In addition, because the same computational methods and algorithms are often employed in many fields and because the tools of CSM are often applied to address interdisciplinary questions, a high priority of the CSM emphasis is to help students learn to communicate with those in other fields. One of the great difficulties of interdisciplinary science is bringing together disparate tools from different disciplines when, very often, the people with those different skill-sets don't understand each other's scientific language. Within the CSM emphasis, students will take courses from instructors in a variety of disciplines including students with different majors, seeing problems from a variety of perspectives. In this way, students will gain a strong grounding in their major, experience using computational tools, and the ability to communicate with scientists in other disciplines.

Midwest Undergraduate Computational Chemistry Consortium (MU3C)

I founded this group as a regional undergraduate research consortium. We conduct two conferences each year as opportunities for undergraduate computational chemistry research students to present results to an audience of peers. One conference is held online each winter and a summer conference is held at a research university, hosted by a noted computational chemist. Past hosts include Mark Ratner of Northwestern University, Jim Skinner of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Chris Cramer of the University of Minnesota, and Mark Gordon of Iowa State University. See the MU3C homepage for more information about upcoming (and past) conferences.

Teaching Philosophy

My interests in teaching and curriculum development are, like my research, highly interdisciplinary--stressing the similarities of and connections between different disciplines. Through both my own courses and through broader curriculum development efforts, I strive to break down the barriers that isolate students. For instance, physics students should see that there is much interesting physics to be explored in complex systems such as polymers; biologists should see that understanding quantum mechanical tunneling is essential to understanding some enzymes; chemists should see that enzymes are much better at doing chemistry than most chemists; and all science students should see that math is absolutely essential. However, interdisciplinary breadth must be explored in moderation. There can be tremendous benefit to being able to see the connections between one?s own discipline and others, but without depth of focus in one's own field, those connections cannot be explored adequately. Therefore, I endeavor to provide students with a strong grounding in their discipline while exposing them to the tremendous overlap of algorithm with and application to other fields.

I believe this kind of interdisciplinary focus should also apply to non-science majors. As scientific discoveries play a larger role in society, the need for everyone to understand and appreciate the discoveries grows. Thus, all science faculty have a responsibility not only to provide students in their discipline with the background they need to advance in their careers, but to also provide non-majors with the understanding and appreciation they need for their roles in society. This doesn't mean that economics majors need to understand the beauty of the partition function, but it does mean they need to understand enough about thermodynamics to make informed decisions about alternative energy sources; enough about development to make informed decisions about stem cells; and enough about atmospheric chemistry to make informed decisions about pollution.

Whether my students are chemistry majors, other science majors, or non-science majors I believe the best way to accomplish the goals stated above is by using a variety of means to engage students as actively as possible within the security of a learning community. These means of engagement range from multi-week inquiry-based independent projects, to small-group problem-solving, to concept questions sprinkled throughout a lecture. However students are engaged, I believe strongly that my responsibility in the classroom is not simply to present information, but to assess their needs and adjust instruction accordingly. Thus, I believe communication in the classroom must be bidirectional to be truly effective. This requires that students realize they are part of the learning process and that they are comfortable enough to express both intellectual leaps and lack of understanding. It requires that they are part of a classroom-sized community whose common goal is for everyone to learn as much as possible.