University of Wisconsin Stout | Wisconsin's Polytechnic University

My Teaching Philosophy: Immersion Pedagogy

My brand of teaching is immersion pedagogy.  Whenever possible, I bring cutting-edge nanomaterials research into my classrooms, and students to the forefronts of my own knowledge.  Students learn what physics is by doing real physics.   The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in a place where that language is spoken.  Physics is the language of energy, the stuff of the world.  To learn the language, I take my students to the lab.

I teach introductory physics courses (college and university levels) from a top-down approach. I start from a thing that is familiar, like a cell phone, and talk about the physics behind it. For example, electromagnetic waves, in the form of radio waves, transmit information between the phone and tower. We need to understand their amplitude, interference patterns, and how they affect electrons in the phone antenna. That can lead to electric forces and currents and all kinds of circuit analysis.  

I also teach our condensed matter physics course and some nanoscience courses, such as NANO 101.  I'm actively involved in improving our Materials Science Concentration within the Applied Science Program, as well as the Materials Science Minor, available to all Stout students.

The chalkboard is such a classic physics instruction instrument.  In this image, I am teaching about how atoms can come close to each other without touching.   This is an important idea for understanding many things about matter, including nanocluster properties.  For example, "Why do clusters have certain densities and prefer to create surfaces in certain ways?"