Outreach and Education

Teaching experience and philosophy

I pursue and enjoy finding and sharing knowledge, in both width and depth dimensions. I like to share the hands-on part of the lab, where it surprisingly leads to confirming or questioning the theory. Likewise, I enjoy the brainstorming or thought experiment process of the theory, where it explains or fails to explain the observations. I intend to communicate teaching and research so that my students experience how knowledge is found by scientists, and my researchers get to better explain what they find.

Over my working experiences, I was exposed to a multicultural working and living environment. I was sometimes a rare experimentalist in a theoretical institute. Now, I suddenly belong to a minority in many areas of my background working in a regional liberal arts college. As I branched out into the various aspects of learning, however, I experience mutual synergy into the boundaries in academic field, method of learning, nation, language, and worldview. Thanks to my neighbors who reached out to me, I became near-bilingual, a leading member of international research collaborations, and even a PI of a research program using cosmological hydrodynamical computer simulations. My interdisciplinary learning experiences help me become more versatile and resilient, and I want to share this experience with students and researchers as they step into their academic inquiries.

During my career, I acquired qualitatively meaningful teaching and outreach records. These include teaching assistant/instructor activities for both research-oriented and non-major students. Over the past couple of years, I developed several theory and lab classes (Physics 1 and 2 for majors and non-majors, Astronomy, Modern Physics), and started a regular research meeting targeted for student-participating publications in the Astrophysical Journal (in preparation). I co-authored a reference textbook in High School Earth Science and proofread a children's astronomy book, translated into Korean. I enjoy giving public talks to introduce astronomy to future college students as well as share with my church members the complementary role of faith and science. These broad educational experiences help me interact in a diverse learning community with a complex population and interest.

Some images of the celestial objects near and far, taken by undergraduate students from various majors (Fall 2024).

Press releases