Pedagogy

Teaching Philosophy

Engineering is the application of creativity, and engineering knowledge is empowering. My teaching philosophy centers around helping students realize their creative potential by developing meaningful solutions through independently driven and community-enhanced learning. Effective student learning is achieved through a twofold process where students individually develop a connection with the course material in a way that is natural to them and collaboratively exchange perspectives and ideas to generate inclusive solutions when decision-making for the good of society. This methodology is optimized through a flexible learning environment that promotes reflection-based, intrinsically driven exploration and holistic professional development to encourage and enhance learning experiences with high community emotional intelligence.

Research

Emotional Intelligence in Engineering Students

My interest in engineering students' holistic development has led me to aid Dr. Glaucia Prado in her study of how a 10-week wellness course can improve students' emotional intelligence and psychological capital. The course, taught by Dr. Prado, is offered through the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and is open to all undergraduate engineering students. Students are surveyed before the course to determine initial emotional intelligence and psychological capital scores and after the course to assess any changes. Additionally, students report demographic information and complete the Big-Five personality test to determine any relevant correlations to changes in score. Results are compared between control and limited-intervention groups. Students in the wellness course group are interviewed before and after the course. This study is currently ongoing. I have presented preliminary results orally within the Education Division at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Conference in Boston, MA (Nov. 2025) and as a poster at the University of California, Davis Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference (Dec. 2025). Updated analyses and findings will be published in academic journals (links to come)!

Teaching Samples

Boots on the Ground: Sonoma Water Site Visit with Senior Design Students

Holistic Development for Community Learning: Lecture on Imposter Syndrome & Growth Mindset

Engineers are humans solving human problems. To do this, it is essential that we embrace our humanity in our decision-making for the good of society. As an instructor, I will incorporate lectures, activities, and discussions on emotionality for effective engineering in my classes. I have already begun this work as a TA when I gave an interactive lecture on imposter syndrome and growth mindset to over 100 students in the Civil & Environmental Engineering senior design class. In the lecture, I shared my own experience with imposter syndrome, talked about how others experience imposter syndrome, and discussed how it can manifest in people’s work and quality of life. I anonymously incoorperated students’ voices using an audience open-response and polling tool integrated into my slides to get live student responses to questions for (1) why it is important to talk about imposter syndrome in engineering, (2) how many people had experienced imposter syndrome, and (3) how students felt knowing imposter syndrome was common. Over 80% of students reported having experienced imposter syndrome, and many responded that they felt seen and less intimidated having learned about it in this setting. We also discussed how to combat imposter syndrome with a growth mindset to promote learning and success. I ended the lecture by reciting self-affirmations with the entire class, which was followed with student applause. In their anonymous feedback, students reported that it was the most engaging lecture of the quarter and that they were grateful to have received it.

The annotated slide deck below is adapted from an original version created by Dr. Colleen Bronner at UC Davis. I presented the updated version on 2/25/2026 for ECI 193A. Student reflection and feedback samples are also provided.

Cultivating Intrinsic Motivation: Maximizing Learning Opportunities & Promoting Identity-Linked Reflection

I have found that students are most driven to learn when they have the freedom to develop a connection with the course material in a way that is natural to them. However, typical problems assigned in engineering classes can be limited in scope, aligning to the interests of only the most academically dedicated students. Outside of the classroom, the problems that students may seek to solve will be much broader and open-ended. Thus, students must be prepared to apply the technical abilities, knowledge, and experience accumulated both inside and outside of the classroom to practice career-focused problem solving. As an instructor, I want students to be able to connect with the course content such that they may be able to find purpose (and therefore motivation) and fulfillment in doing it.

To achieve intrinsically motivated learning, students’ learning experiences will center their own reflections. At the beginning of a course, students will complete an assignment reflecting on their identity, interests, and professional goals. At the end of each week, students would be asked to revisit their initial reflections and contextualize the course content to their lives, note their progress, or generate ideas to better enhance their learning based on their goals.

Students will be given assignments to practice and apply learned concepts in short forms (homework questions with discrete solutions for immediate feedback) and long forms (open-ended projects that require analytical thinking, creativity, and knowledge synthesis). Long-form team project assignments will be student-centered, allowing them the freedom to explore content and/or communication formats that interest them. For example, as a project, students must apply hydrostatic principles to design a hypothetical water-retention system and submit their design as a form of outreach to nearby communities that is digestible in 10 minutes. Students will be allowed to select a meaningful “project site” and form of communication that suits their interest & needs (brochure, podcast, YouTube video, oral presentation). Submissions will be assessed based on design quality (demonstration of learning outcomes) and audience consideration. As a TA for a civil & environmental engineering fluid dynamics laboratory and senior design, I have had the opportunity to oversee similar projects. Students are most driven to learn and perform the best on assignments when they have the most agency to create a meaningful project outcome. To further solidify the connection between purpose and product, students will submit post-project reflections justifying their choices and how they can apply lessons learned from the experience in the future.

Throughout the course, I will maximize opportunities for learning by making course material accessible to accommodate the diversity in learning styles, interests, needs, and paces. By sharing lecture materials including notes, slides, recordings, references, and relevant current events online with ample time to access them before class, I hope to provide students with an equitable learning experience. When I make lecture slides as a TA, I include links in my slides to additional resources for students to access and investigate on their own time from the course website that students have utilized and appreciated.