Ph.D. (Chemistry) State University of New York, Stony Brook

BS  (Chemistry)    University of South Carolina, Columbia

High School:   Irmo High School

What I do best is teach students college chemistry with high retention.   For instance at Presbyterian College, the standard drop/fail rate for science majors General Chemistry is around 30%.   I had almost full retention in my sections of General Chemistry at Presbyterian College while having about the same average on the end of the semester common assessment exam.   At Coker University the standard drop/fail rate is anywhere from 50% to 30% in the Physical Sciences.    I had almost full retention in both my General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry classes at Coker University.   

I do not dumb down the class or just give points to students for doing nothing to obtain the retention.   Most college professors typically give 3 exams and a final exam.   I give 3 to 4 exams and a final exam and 6 to 7 quizzes.   I also give about 2 to 3 homework in class (what high school teachers call "in seat assignments") every time the class meets.   Education studies have shown that students who fail/drop are usually students who miss lots of class.   The HW in class is a modification of "clickers" that some college professors use but without actually having access to "clicker" system.   However I know some college professors who use "clickers" with not much of an effect in retention.

Retention is a big problems in colleges.   If a student starts with a major in engineering/pre-pharmacy/pre-med/nursing and ends up drop/fail chemistry classes (usually a requirement for lots of STEM majors) it really impacts students.   I taught one of those introduction to college classes and the textbook stated that students who complete a BS get a big bump in pay for the rest of their lives but students who only have "some college" gets no bump in pay.

Bio:   I grew up mostly in Columbia, SC.   I attended E.L. Wright Elementary School, Dent Jr. High and Spring Valley High before moving and graduating from Irmo High School.   My Dad was a tenured Physics professor at Benedict College for some 30 years before retirement.   He is around 100 years old (but he was kind of old when he had me so I am not as old as you may think).   Mom passed away last year but I am currently still living with my Dad in the same house that my parents bought in Irmo more than 30 years ago.   

My Dad earned his doctorate in Physics from Florida State University.   My only sibling, a brother earned his doctorate in computer science from Ohio State University and is a tenured professor at George Washington University in Washington DC.   

I earned my doctorate in Chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.   I graduated from the U of SC with a BS in Chemistry (3.8/4.0 GPA).   I graduated from Irmo HS in the top 1% in GPA and was a commended students (in the top 3% nationally on PSAT).

I taught college Chemistry mostly freshman (General Chemistry) and sophomores (Organic Chemistry) for some 20 years.   I was a tenure track  professor at most recently Delaware State University (chemistry department had a small Ph.D. program)  but did not earn tenure.    Earning tenure is a little bit like playing the game "survivor".  Recently I have been trying to get teaching positions near my parents because they need help.   I have been teaching  recently in the state of SC as a non tenure track professor at:   Francis Marion University (Fall 2012 to Spring 2015), Presbyterian College (Fall 2019, Spring 2020), Citadel (Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, took off Spring 2022 - parent's health problems), and Coker University (Fall 2022, Spring 2023).   I also taught at Arkansas State University (Jonesboro), Southern Illinois University, SUNY(Cortland) among others.   People often confuse me for other faculty so if you know someone who was teaching at those places and it is not in those times, it was not me.

High School Teaching Certification:   I recently passed the Praxis in the Chemistry content area with a    190/200 (95% score) as of the beginning of October 2023.   I do know my chemistry.    The  score needed to pass in the state of SC is 75%    Median score is 159/200.  I have also been accepted to PACE and Teachers of Tomorrow.   So I am treated as a certified teacher as of October 2023.

College Teachers do not need education certification to teach.   They just need to have  a Ph.D. in the content area.   I have a Ph.D. in Chemistry so I can teach Chemistry at any college without teacher certification.

High School teachers need certification by the state in order to teach as a certified teacher.   In the state of SC current law is that anyone who has passed the Praxis Exam in the content area can teach.   

The normal route to be a certified teacher is to take classes in education.   I have never taken any classes in education however I have been teaching mostly freshman and sophomore college students for about 20 years (mostly in colleges with 4 year degrees or higher, about a year at community colleges).  I have only taken graduate courses in chemistry. I also have  taken a year of calculus based Physics (physics 211/212) while doing my BS in Chemistry at the U of SC.   Physics 211/212 was equivalent to taking 2 years of Physics at the time at the U of SC. 

Last year I was teaching at Coker University.   I was not the person teaching Physics at Coker last year so I was NOT the person who started with about 20 students at the beginning of the semester and ended up with 5 students at the end of the semester.  (That class was actually entirely an online class.)  I was also full time at Coker so I was not the teacher who was teaching high school and also teaching at Coker.   People often confuse me for other faculty.

Classes Teaching This Semester:   They told me that I was hired before the start of classes at Richland North East but there was a long delay before the paperwork processing was completed and I was allowed to start teaching.   I missed all of the start of the semester meetings so I missed all of the discussion of rules at RNE and  Richland Two.   So I did not know a lot of how I am supposed to contact the parents in case of disciplinary problems.   I have not yet figured out all the rules.   For instances my students told me that I was supposed to allow cell phones as calculators because they don't have money to buy calculators.   Another teacher told me that they are supposed to use their chrombooks (supplied by the school) as calculators and using a cell phone is considered cheating (they can message each other answers) and the penalty is earning a zero on exams and quizzes.

My students had no teacher for the first month but had some sort of online class although I was told to not include anything as having already been covered when I started to teach this semester at RNE.  So I started teaching with a month of classes missing in my classes (1/2 of first quarter already gone).      Even with that I am fully caught up in class content but I also only did one lab in the first  quarter.   In high school classes are 90 minutes.    There is supposed to be  "warm up", "in seat assignments", notebook keeping and I see lots of other science faculty with drawing & sculpture  posters outside their classroom which are some sort of projects for points.   RNE is an AVID school and they advocate things like encouraging students to talk in the language of the sciences for points and drawings to summarize science content for points.   Some teachers do  all exams open book.   Other teachers told me that of the 90 minutes you are only supposed to lecture for about 30 minutes.   

Student engagement is always a good thing.   I believe that a teacher is supposed to teach students Chemistry and Physics content.  "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."   or "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."  

The idea is to "teach" students to figuratively "fish".   The idea is not to cripple students to not even think of fishing by telling the students that it is so hard to fish that it is better to just get free fish.   The idea is not to tell students that they should not attempt to practice chemistry / physics everyday because they will just be given the fish anyway.    If students "practice fishing" everyday, they will learn the science content even if it looks difficult upon an initial look at what they need to learn.   If a student misses coming to class and never "practices fishing", then they cannot possibly learn the chemistry/physics content.   They would  not learn NOT because they are too stupid to learn the material or because they are missing back ground to learn the material .   They would not learn the content because they missed all instruction on how to do the content and never practiced the content.

I also received a class room which apparently had been used by the Math department for 10 years so my classroom (lab room) had clogged drains, leaking safety shower (shut off because of the leaking), no safety glasses. When I turned on the water red rust came out with sputtering water.   There were no balances in the room and almost no equipment or glassware.   There were a few graduated cylinders, a few beakers in the room a bunch of bunsen burners with no wire mesh for support stands so the bunsen burners could not be used for heating reactions.   Recently I received some electronic scales and some hot plates.  Most colleges have a common lab that is already prepped so that you just teach the lab that all the other sections are teaching in a common lab room with all the needed equipment.   So far it appears that there is no such thing in high school and I have not had the time to get my own labs up and running.