As a teacher, I care for students' success in classes and in their professional careers. I strive to motivate, stimulate, and inspire my students to be logical, critical, independent, and enthusiastic thinkers. These are life skills that are valuable to whatever profession they may eventually endeavor to do. Geoscience is inherently a very diverse and interdisciplinary field; therefore, I value the broad range of perspectives from students with different life experiences and educational backgrounds. When teaching Geology, I take every opportunity to make geology fun and relevant to students' daily lives. While scientific research typically focuses on specific topics within a particular field, I encourage students to frame their research questions in a broader scientific and social context, and to interact with researchers from different disciplines. Understanding the complex interactions between Earth's lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere is essential to unraveling the dynamic processes that shape our habitable planet.

I have assisted in teaching a variety of introductory- to graduate-level courses, including Introduction to Geological Sciences, Earth Materials and Processes, Living with Volcanoes, Geochemistry, and Igneous Petrology when I was a graduate student at the University of Washington. The faculty instructors gave me a great degree of freedom to lead lab sections, review sessions, and as a guest lecturer. In addition, I designed lab questions, prepared lab specimens and presentation slides, and graded lab reports and homework assignments. Teaching refreshes my perspective on my research and prepares me to be a better science communicator to the general public. For my career, I will continue to stimulate students' interest in Geoscience by promoting discussions across academic disciplines, broadening their research perspectives, sharpening their technical and critical thinking skills, and engaging them in innovative research projects.

Teaching Assistant at Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington

ESS 439 Igneous Petrology, Instructor: Fang-Zhen Teng (Winter 2017)

I taught students how to classify rock types from hand specimen, how to identify minerals based on optical properties, how to read rock histories from thin-sections.

Pleochroism of sapphirine

ESS 312 Geochemistry, Instructors: Fang-Zhen Teng and John Stone (Springs 2014, 2016, 2017)

I taught students to calculating thermodynamic problems, perform routine geochemical data analyses, construct typical geochemical plots (e.g., REE pattern), and model partial melting/fractional crystallization processes.

ESS 212 Earth Materials and Processes, Instructor: Michael Brown (Winter 2015)

I taught about crystallography, mineralogy, and petrology, including how to identify minerals and rocks in hand specimen and thin-sections.

ESS 106 Living with volcanoes, Instructor: Michael Harrell (Winter 2016)

ESS 101 Introduction to Geological Sciences, Instructor: Terry Swanson (Autumn 2013 and Winter 2014)

I introduced basic geological concepts, including geotechniques, plate tectonics, minerals, igneous/sedimentary/metamorphic rocks, geologic time and geohazrds.

Volunteer teacher in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, NW China

Inspired by the dream to become a mountain area voluntary teacher ever since my early childhood when I saw the poor children studying in shabby classrooms, reading under dim light and eat only two meals a day due to the lack of money on the television, I finally got an opportunity to work as one in a mountain village middle school in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Northwest China, in my sophomore summer. Over my undergraduate life, I have financially supported ten needy students to continue their high school studies by using my scholarship. After graduation from the university, I still keep in touch with the volunteer group and keep trying everything that I can to help them, be it raising money for their families or collecting used books, clothes and stationery from the public. It was a great happiness to know that nine of them have successfully been admitted into universities. To me, there are certain similarities between the research work and volunteer service, for they both called for great patience, enthusiasm and dedication.