Summary Discussions

In my summary discussions below, I discuss my efforts and contributions, in teaching, advising, curriculum development, institutional work and future goals. Within the site, I have linked several items of what I discuss. 

I began teaching physics at College of DuPage in Fall 2023. Each fall semester, I teach Physics 2111 (Calculus-Based Mechanics) and Physics 2112 (Calculus-Based Electricity and Magnetism). Each spring, I typically teach a double section of Physics 2111 with around 50 students. Most of my students are engineering majors preparing to transfer to four-year institutions, many through the COD Engineering Pathways program. A significant number go on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, while others transfer to UIC, Iowa State, and other leading engineering schools.

I bring genuine passion for physics into the classroom and aim to make every lecture engaging and energetic. At the beginning of each week, I take time to share announcements—highlighting upcoming quizzes, exams, and homework deadlines—while also reminding students of campus resources available to support them. I frequently invite COD tutors to visit class and introduce themselves so students know where they can get help.

1) Syllabus and Student Interviews

Every class begins with a comprehensive syllabus that serves as a “one-stop shop” for course information. It includes my office location and hours, contact information, course description, textbook details, learning objectives, grading policies, and a full weekly schedule. I dedicate the first day of class to reviewing this document in detail to ensure students understand expectations and available resources.

During the first month of class, I have students complete a short questionnaire that they must have stamped at the Teaching and Academic Support Center (TASC) before bringing it to my office for a brief conversation. This activity allows me to put faces to names early in the semester, learn about their academic goals and hobbies, and ensures they know where to find my office should they need assistance. (view questionnaire)

4) Student Assessment 

Assessment is an essential part of my teaching practice and helps me ensure that students are truly mastering the material. I use a variety of assessment methods throughout the semester:

• Weekly 20-minute quizzes to reinforce key concepts and provide consistent practice.  Quizzes are similar to a homework problem or a problem complete during class.

• Online homework problem sets  (8-10 problems) that encourage students to work independently and apply concepts to longer problems.   

• A short post-lab assignment to help students reflect on experimental results and strengthen the connection between theory and practice.

• Two midterm exams spaced at roughly one-third and two-thirds of the term to assess cumulative understanding.

• A comprehensive final exam to evaluate overall mastery of the course material.

These assessments provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding while giving me valuable feedback on where additional instruction may be needed.   

5) Flexibility and Student Support

While I set high standards, I also recognize the importance of flexibility in supporting student success. To reduce unnecessary stress and account for life circumstances, I allow students to drop their lowest homework and lab grades. I also provide extensions on weekly homework when needed, ensuring students can balance their academic and personal responsibilities. Additionally, I offer students the opportunity to replace a low midterm score with their final exam grade if they demonstrate improvement. These policies are designed to encourage persistence, reward growth, and create a more equitable learning environment.

6) Extra Help 

In addition to my regular office hours, I consistently offer extended opportunities for students to seek help and review course material. Students are encouraged to stop by my office, or they can easily contact me by email to arrange a one-on-one Zoom meeting at a convenient time. Before each exam, I also host comprehensive Zoom review sessions, typically lasting between one and three hours, where students can submit problems in advance or ask questions in during the session. All sessions are recorded, and I share both the recordings and my annotated notes with the entire class to ensure that all students, including those unable to attend, can benefit from the discussion and explanations.      Examples of the review session recordings are provided below.

• Physics 2112 Exam 2 Review Session - Nov 9th, 2025: View

• Physics 2111 Exam 2 Review Session - Nov 2nd, 2025:  View

• Physics 2111  Torque and Angular Kinematics Review Session - April 16th, 2025:  View

• Physics 2111 HE1 SP17 Exam Solutions - March 2nd, 2025:  View

• Physics 2111 HE1 2024 Exam Solutions -  Feb 24th , 2025: View

• Physics 2112 Gauss's Law Review - Sept 22nd, 2025: View

7) Fun in Physics

Over the past year, I have introduced a few fun and creative elements to help build a positive and engaging classroom environment. One of these is the “BOOM” stamp, which I award to students who achieve a perfect score on a quiz. This small gesture has become a favorite classroom tradition.  My students genuinely look forward to earning the stamp, and it adds a sense of celebration and motivation to each assessment.   Last summer I also created an electricity and magnetism themed music video titled “Back EMF” to welcome my PHYS 2112 students on the first day of class. The video highlights key elements of the course while presenting them in a humorous and lighthearted way. These additions not only make the class more enjoyable but also help students feel more excited about learning physics. 

Since joining College of DuPage, I have served as the faculty advisor for the Engineering and Technology Club (ETC)—the largest student club on campus. Each year, I help students organize a variety of events such as the cardboard boat races, egg drop challenge, and bridge building competition. Every November, ETC also hosts its annual Engineering Showcase, where I assist with planning, logistics, food coordination, and on-site event management.

A major part of my role as advisor involves mentoring and supporting two competitive robotics teams. The first, our RoboBrawl team, consists of 7–12 students who design, build, and compete with battle robots at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign each April. The team meets weekly to design, manufacture, and test their robots. I place a strong emphasis on safety and responsible engineering practices. In summer 2024, I led a robotics safety project to benchmark safety practices used at other institutions and to develop our own internal guidelines. Our work addressed mechanical, electrical, and general lab safety, leading to new recommendations such as the use of approved lithium-ion battery storage bags, faculty-approved weapon locks when robots are outside the arena, and the construction of a safety test box for robot testing. This project also strengthened collaboration with BTEC faculty who help support ETC.
Click to view a copy of our presentation.   COD_Robotics_Safety.pdf

Our Lunabotics teams have achieved outstanding success in recent years. In 2024, we won first place in the Systems Engineering Paper (SEP) competition and earned a $2,000 award. In 2025, we placed third for the SEP ($500), ranked fourth in the mining competition at UCF, and advanced to the Kennedy Space Center, where we finished sixth overall—outperforming several major engineering universities. For these efforts, I was honored with an Artemis Educator Award recognizing my contributions to student mentorship and inspiration.

Click here to view the Artemis Award nomination letter written by College DuPage students.

Click here to view the official press release from NASA.

Click here to view a  recent article about NASA Lunabotics in the College of DuPage's student newspaper The Courier

Beyond club advising, I also mentor individual students seeking hands-on research experience. In fall 2024, I began meeting weekly with a second-year student to design independent projects that extended beyond classroom learning. Together, we explored high-frequency transmission line measurements, the capstan equation, acoustic propulsion, and Python-based motion simulations. This year, I am mentoring three students on year-long projects.  One student is developing a self-balancing cube using 3D printing, microcontrollers, and control algorithms, another is building a custom video analysis application for COD physics labs, and a third is designing a projectile launcher to be featured in some instructional videos for our labs.

Since joining COD, I have written over 15 recommendation letters, helped students revise resumes and apply for internships, and held countless discussions about career paths in engineering and science. I strive to share with students the lessons and perspective I gained from 17 years in the consumer electronics industry.   My role as an advisor is to help students bridge the gap between academic study and professional engineering practice. 

1) Development of in-class demonstrations 

I have developed and refined more than 25 in-class demonstrations to deepen student understanding and to support my colleagues in the physics department. These demonstrations are designed to make abstract concepts tangible by allowing students to see physics in action rather than simply calculating from equations. Whether illustrating rotational dynamics with custom-built apparatus or complex motion using computer simulations, the demonstrations encourage curiosity, discussion, and provide memorable shared learning experiences.  I regularly share these demonstrations and supporting materials with other faculty to promote collaborative teaching and enhance the physics departments instructional toolkit. In addition to their use in my courses, many of these demos are regularly featured in outreach events, high school visits, and STEMCON, helping to spark interest in physics among prospective students and the broader community.

Special thanks to my good friend Brian Mulhall for all his help building and testing many of the demos shown below.  I couldn’t have done it without him. 

2) Development of Resources for Students

 In both my Physics 2111 (Mechanics) and 2112 (Electricity and Magnetism) courses, the midterm and final exams collectively account for 55% of the students’ final grade. These standardized exams are provided to the College of DuPage by the Physics Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The exams differ in format from the homework assignments, consisting entirely of multiple-choice questions that assess both conceptual understanding and quantitative problem-solving skills.

During my first year at COD, I began creating supplementary resources for students in a shared OneNote document that included exam practice problems with detailed, step-by-step solutions, quiz solutions, and my own end-of-chapter summary notes. Click here to see link to One Note Document for Physics 2112.    However, after encountering recurring accessibility issues with OneNote, I transitioned these materials to a shared Google Drive folder for easier and more reliable student access.

Last summer, I completed a comprehensive project in which I solved every available practice exam—18 full-length exams totaling over 400 problems and 1,000 individual questions. 

Click here to view Google shared folder.    

For each problem, I carefully wrote out the relevant equations and showed all intermediate steps leading to the final answer. Samples of the solutions are provided below.      The collection is organized into midterm and final exam sections, with blank exam copies and my fully worked solutions available for download. This resource provides students with clearly written, accessible solutions that can be viewed on any computer or mobile device.

3)  Physics Ninja

Sample of Physics 2111  Review Videos

Sample of Physics 2112  Review Videos

Physics Ninja was featured in the May 2025 edition of The Physics Teacher the most prominent, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Association of Physics Teachers. 

This semester, I have been collaborating with a Engineering Pathways  student to enhance the software, improving its usability and updating it to run seamlessly within standard web browsers with a modern interface. I am now partnering with Dan McCallum from Learning Technologies to produce high-quality instructional videos that integrate with this new tool. Together, these efforts provide the physics department with a cost-effective and accessible alternative to commercial lab software, while promoting innovation and student collaboration in the development process.     This project will be completed in early January 2026.

5) Continuing Education Youth Academy - Improving the Spike Lego Kits

6) Engineering Student Projects

At the beginning of the semester, I offered extracurricular project opportunities to students interested in applying physics and engineering concepts beyond the classroom. Four students are currently working with me on various independent projects, one of which involves developing a self-balancing two-wheeled robot. Through this hands-on experience, students are learning how feedback mechanisms maintain stability by designing and tuning PID (Proportional–Integral–Derivative) controllers and implementing them using the accelerometers and gyroscopes in our Spike Robotic Kits.     The robot uses these sensors to detect its tilt angle and dynamically adjust motor output to remain upright. This project provides a practical and engaging way to connect theoretical principles of physics with real-world applications.

The next phase of the project will focus on building a self-balancing triangular robot, as shown above. This expanded version will introduce students to additional stages of the engineering design process, including 3D printing, mechanical fabrication, and component integration. Students will also gain experience working with a more powerful ESP32 microcontroller and interfacing with off-the-shelf accelerometers and gyroscopes. This phase not only deepens their understanding of control systems and programming but also exposes them to practical aspects of prototyping and design improvement.

I currently serve on three institutional committees at the College of DuPage. I first joined the Honors Faculty Advisory Committee (HFAC) near the end of my first year at COD. Over the past two years, I have reviewed several new honors course proposals, participated in honors student events, and contributed to the continued growth of the Honors Program. My involvement with HFAC, along with valuable discussions with colleagues and students, inspired me to submit a proposal for a new honors version of Physics 2111.  The new honors course was accepted by HFAC at the recent November meeting and will be offered next year. The physics department currently does not offer any honors-level courses, even though each semester I am approached by highly motivated students who wish to complete an honors contract but do not yet meet the credit requirements. Establishing a formal honors course would provide these students with new opportunities and help strengthen their transfer and internship applications. A central feature of the new course will be an independent semester project, where students design computational simulations to solve advanced problems, or model real-world physical systems that align with their interests and academic goals. I view this initiative as one of the most meaningful ways to contribute to the Honors community at COD.

In addition, I recently joined the Celebration of Academic Excellence Committee and look forward to helping plan and organize the annual event recognizing outstanding student achievement across campus.

In January 2025, I also became a member of the Faculty Technology Advisory Committee (FTAC), which serves as a liaison between faculty and administration on technology-related issues. The committee's mission is to represent faculty interests, provide feedback on technology initiatives, and evaluate how emerging technologies impact teaching and learning. FTAC is currently conducting a faculty survey to better understand instructional technology needs and is revising the FTAC grant process to encourage greater participation. I am especially excited to serve as a STEM representative on this committee, as many of our current discussions involve the use of artificial intelligence in education.

Over the past 2.5 years I have also served on the STEMCON Committee and the Diagnostic Medical Imaging – Radiography Advisory Committee. 

One of my favorite aspects of being at COD is participating in public outreach events such as STEMCON, open houses, and the Engineering Pathways celebrations. These events provide opportunities to engage with incoming students, share the excitement of science and engineering, and celebrate the achievements of our current students. I believe it is an essential role of faculty to remain visible in the community we serve and to actively support and recognize our students’ accomplishments.

One of my long-term goals is to make Physics 2111 and Physics 2112 entirely zero-cost courses for students. We already use an open educational resource (OER) textbook from OpenStax, which is freely available online and fully editable to align with my course structure. However, our current online homework platform, Expert TA, costs students approximately $35 per semester. Although it remains one of the most affordable third-party systems, my goal is to develop a custom website and problem bank that provides equivalent functionality at no cost to students. I am also exploring the use of MyOpenMath, a free and open-source platform that supports interactive problem sets and automated grading. Over the next two summers, I plan to begin developing these problem sets and collaborate with students from the Art Department to create high-quality illustrations and diagrams for the materials.

Another essential classroom tool used in both Physics 2111 and 2112 is the iClicker system, which allows me to quiz students and collect real-time feedback on conceptual understanding. Currently, students must either purchase a physical remote ($35), buy a used one, or pay $10 per semester for the mobile app. To further reduce student costs, I plan to develop a free, web-based clicker app that students can use on any device. For both the zero-cost homework platform and the custom clicker app, I intend to apply for support through the Faculty Technology Advisory Committee (FTAC) grant program to fund development and testing.