Teaching Portfolio

My experience as both a student and instructor has provided me with what I believe is an approach to teaching and learning that is well-suited to undergraduate-focused institutions. To me, a top-tier undergraduate course integrates three factors:

Careful consideration of what the purpose of the course is—beyond just the learning goals, but understanding why students should care about the material and what content would be most beneficial after commencement.
Engaging classroom activities and meaningful course assessments.
Flexibility of assessments in services of equity and inclusion.

My teaching philosophy entails four main goals for students:

Become citizens who think with evidence
Understand not just the what, but the why and how things connect
Connect concepts to real-world impact
Take active ownership in their own learning.

For further elaboration, please refer to my Teaching Philosophy Statement.

MSU Certification in College Teaching - Introduction

As a PhD Student at Michigan State University, I'm in the process of completing the College of Engineering's Certification in College Teaching (CCT) program through the Graduate School. This is one of the only formal programs in the United States that provides graduate students a comprehensive preparation for teaching at the college level. The program involved coursework on teaching STEM, workshops, and completion of a mentored teaching project to advance five core competencies:

Developing Discipline-Related Teaching Strategies
Creating Effective Learning Environments
Incorporating Technology in Your Teaching
Understanding the University Context
Assessing Student Learning

In this portfolio, I demonstrate evidence for my development and mastery of the five core competencies. For more information, refer to the CCT's homepage.

Core Competency 1: Developing Discipline-Related Teaching Strategies

Description:

I took EGR 811: Foundations in Engineering Education taught by Dr. Katy Colbry in the spring of 2026 to learn more specific pedagogical techniques. While many apply across disciplinary lines, certain subjects have techniques that are unique or especially useful.

For more information, please refer to my project report:

This report contains information regarding the work I did to improve CMSE 201, a utilitarian introduction to computational modeling and data analysis. Building upon the best practices established in the literature, I revised the syllabus and then focused on one week's worth of material.
This week pertains to data contextualization and I created planning documents for pacing between lecture and interactive activities, as well as which learning objective(s) would be associated with each component, and how those objectives would be assessed. Following this week plan, I chose one of the class sessions within the week to create—namely a lecture, a short interactive activity, a group-based in-class activity, and then a homework assignment and accompanying rubric.
All information is described in detail, some of it is provided. The rest of the course content can be provided upon request.

Furthermore, this page also includes the final presentation highlighting certain aspects.

Core Competency 2: Creating Effective and Inclusive Learning Environments

Description:

We've long recognized that traditional course delivery via slide deck and dry monologue is often insufficient for keeping students' attention and helping them learn. To best engage students and encourage them to take their agency in their learning process, instructors must embrace novel instructional and assessment techniques that move the class beyond the traditional format through active learning practices such as clicker questions, think-pair-share exercises, and in-class practice problems and demonstrations.

Artifact:

To advance this competency, I attended MSU's Certification in College Teaching Institute in May of 2025 to highlight best practices in class structure and assignment types and usage. For more information regarding the Institute, refer to the agenda.

Materials Developed:

Through knowledge gained through this workshop, I applied it to better appeal to the variety of learning preferences students may have by creating multiple modes of content delivery such as a comprehensive list of theorems and definitions, multiple-choice practice questions, and a public Kahoot.

Reflection:

Students in the typical classroom carry a tempting distraction in their pocket. Attempts to stop students from slacking off on their devices are often futile and unfairly punish those with legitimate reasons for monitoring their devices. Accordingly, learning environments must be engaging to maintain the students' attention—on top the fact that students pay a lot of money for their courses and education, our students are (usually) adults and must take agency and responsibility in their learning.
One method I've found of accomplishing this is to be relatable to the students during active learning practices. Sharing your experiences, interests, and learning challenges when appropriate, as well as taking an interest in my students' goals and interests creates the space for the students to do the same. As a result, I can tailor the framing of a concept to directly apply to some of their career paths. This also creates a welcoming, conducive atmosphere that gives students the space to ask for help and take ownership of their learning.
Understanding the career goals of my students allows me as the instructor to tailor assignments to pique their interests and motivation in learning the material. Frequently, the material is tangentially relevant to their long-term career goals, but the problem solving skills and intuition of the topic remain applicable. This conveniently ties into my definition of learning and mastery of material—the development of intuition to predict and extrapolate the content to surrounding areas. This may be predicting how a physical phenomenon behaves in a different parameter regime or applying the concept of torque to their understanding of how a bicycle works. Accordingly, both formative and summative assessments should be crafted to reflect this, which could be through quantitative work through formulas to evaluate scaling or through qualitative work explaining an application of the concept.
As a part of the workshop, I was exposed to a few different strategies of employing active learning in the classroom such as partially- or fully-flipped classrooms or the bookend model. Generally speaking, I am against the fully-flipped model where all of the lectures are recorded and posted in advance due to the burden it puts on the students as well as I think it becomes easy to get lazy and complacent as an instructor. I'm torn between favoring the bookend model or the partially-flipped model in my classes, and I think it primarily comes down to instructor-student ratio. The bookend model consists of doing a mini-lecture on a topic, followed by a small active learning activity two or three times in a given session. It is then drilled home and further contextualized in a final summary. In a partially-flipped classroom, there is a short lecture—detailing the main takeaways of a few mini-lectures which are posted online in advance and in more detail—followed by an in-class active learning activity such as a worksheet, think-pair-share exercises, or clicker questions. The partially-flipped classroom style supports a small-to-intermediate instructor-to-student ratio whereas the bookend model can maintain a larger ratio.
Again, in executing these lectures, focusing on the process and implications of the given scientific or mathematical property rather than the textbook description of it. This engages the students by emphasizing the impact of the content rather than the minutiae of the content.

Core Competency 3: Incorporating Technology in Your Teaching

Description:

Education can be enhanced through the use of technology, though there are many different kinds of technology that can be leveraged for different educational uses. Some forms of technology, such as automated quiz grading and online gradebooks, make life easier and more efficient for instructors and allow for quicker feedback for students and are therefore somewhat of a "no-brainer" to incorporate. There are also older and simpler forms of technology that can serve as demonstrations for a given physical phenomenon. Course material can also be delivered to students in unique ways, such as videos, animations, or games. Courses can also include student assessments or projects based around the students utilizing a specific technology, such as presenting a given topic in the form of recorded video or podcast.

Artifact:

To advance this competency, I attended MSU's Certification in College Teaching Institute in May of 2025 to highlight best practices of technology in its simplest definition in the classroom to engage students. For more information regarding the Institute, refer to the agenda.

Materials Developed:

Reflection:

We live in an increasingly technological world, and getting experience with different types of technology in a college course can help the students succeed outside of the classroom and in their careers. However, poor implementation of technology in the classroom helps no one and only introduces a mechanical barrier to true learning and to developing a well-prepared workforce. The allure of new technology risks wasting time, money, and energy, and the benefits of any new technology must be thoughtfully weighed against what is required for the instructor and/or students to learn and implement it.
To use technology effectively in the classroom requires not only the in-depth understanding of the technology but also understanding its place in the classroom and what types of lessons it's well-suited to teach. Technology is a tool to be leveraged in service of specific course goals, not a goal in and of itself. Incorporating technology also requires recognizing that some students, particularly underprivileged students, may not have had the access to and experience with that might be assumed.
Incorporating technology in the classroom also goes well with active learning course design models such as the bookend approach or a partially-flipped classroom. Mini-lectures posted online, a well-designed course website, and assessing formative learning through clicker questions or a "technology jam" are all components of those active learning models that rely on educational technology.
The use of technology can also be used to demonstrate a specific property, context, or application of the given course content. For instance, while teaching Optimization in Data Science, displaying, or at least referencing, a Roomba in regards to minimizing a cost function shows a tangible application of course content which might otherwise be though of as abstract in the eyes of the students. Demos such as these allow the students to see the impact of the material, and in doing so, stay motivated in learning the content. Additionally, showing a bicycle and its gears when teaching gears and torque in introductory physics, or using a pendulum to display conservation of energy and momentum, provides a concrete example for the students to root the content in a given application. Rooting a given course concept to given applications allows students to build intuition and extrapolate its behavior to surrounding physical and mathematical concepts.

Core Competency 4: Understanding the University Context

Description:

Different types of colleges and universities have different goals for the students—different skills and mindsets they hope to pass on to their students. Accordingly, they have different expectations for their teaching faculty. Understanding this context and how to differentiate across the spectrum of higher education is important for not only landing a job at a given type of postsecondary institution, but also effectively living up to that school's mission for students in your courses. Even within a single university, different courses fill different roles in students' educations; therefore, instructors should approach these courses differently to ensure they're giving their students the most beneficial, fulfilling education possible. To advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, it's also important for teachers to recognize the economic, cultural, and social context in which students go through their college education, which may differ from their own experience.

Artifact:

To advance this competency, I attended MSU's Certification in College Teaching Institute in May of 2025. We discussed examples of institutional mission statements from different types colleges and universities, particularly in the context of seeking employment at a given type, and how one should align themselves to an institution's goals. For more information regarding the Institute, refer to the agenda. Furthermore, you can view my notes as well here.

Reflection:

Understanding the university context is vital for effective teaching because effective teaching has different definitions at different types of institutions. The qualities in an instructor that a research-intensive university values might not be what a community college or liberal arts school wants or reveres.
In my view, understanding the university context and leveraging that understanding into your teaching practice requires deep thought and care on the type of course you will be teaching, how it fits into the department's teaching goals and curricula, and what the students will seeks to gain from it. Then, you must be able to distinguish how different aspects of a course's structure, policies, or material will align with those goals and be able to adapt them to fit. For example, the physics and intuition of capillary pressure and blood flow would be important for an introductory physics course for premed students but not necessarily an intro course designed for physics majors.
The 2025 CCT Institute covered this competency with a discussion on different types of postsecondary institutions and their goals for their graduates. Some universities focus on training the future workforce while others seek to cultivate more well-rounded, compassionate citizens; instructors must channel different mindsets to get the job and while on the job depending on context.
As an instructor for CMSE 382: Optimization in Data Science while at MSU, I sought to emphasize the implications, consequences, and effects of certain theorems and properties over the individual facts and concepts. As MSU's primary goal is to develop the next generation of workforce in the state of Michigan, most of my students won't use these concepts in a mathematically rigorous way, but they will need to apply the critical thinking and problem solving skills developed in the course while on the job once they graduate. It's also beneficial for everyone, and inline with any university's goal of producing informed citizens, to understand the role of science in a functioning society. I of course still covered the technical content but primarily framed it in a way to highlight its use after the course such as in autonomous vehicle software or financial portfolio management.
Going forward, what I've learned from the CCT Institute will hopefully help me land a teaching position, and what I've learned from my experience will help me tailor my teaching to the course and institution I find myself. At an institution focused on building effective citizens, I would make my science courses, especially those geared toward non-majors, as much about scientists as they are about science; for those outside of science, without this education, a press release conveying a university professor "getting a million-dollar grant" could conjure negative impressions.
I also intend to translate my understanding of students' variable lived experiences into fair and compassionate course policies. Although I've been fortunate enough myself to keep up with mandatory attendance and strict assignment deadlines as a student, I know that there were factors outside of my control, such as me being healthy with room and board covered so I could focus on my studies, as much as it was to my own organizational and time management skills. Accordingly, I usually implement a soft-deadline on assignments based on type and grading schedule. Extending compassion goes a long way and it's difficult to predict the mindset a student is in when they forget to click submit or upload their assignment that you saw them complete.

Core Competency 5: Assessing Student Learning

Mentored Teaching Project

The last competency associated with this Certificate in College Teaching is a mentored teaching project under the guidance of a faculty member.

For this project, I explored the effect of multimodal delivery of course content in relating to reviewing for a midterm exam or another summative assessment within CMSE 382 under the tutelage of Dr. Firas Khasawneh. This was done by doubling the amount of modes for the second midterm compared to the first.
More specifically, I created a comprehensive list of theorems and definitions, multiple-choice practice questions, and a public Kahoot, on top of the preexisting book chapters, slides, and recorded lectures.

In short, this increased the overall student performance, and more notably, disproportionately increased the scores of the lower performing students. For more details, please refer to my project report.

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