Teaching philosophy

​As a teacher, when I consider complex and intense questions about how to effectively teach and best engage students in different classrooms, I always think about the needs of the students, and more importantly how to meet those needs. In addition to meeting the shifting needs of students, it is also extremely important for me as an educator to help students develop their “hard skills” – critical thinking, problem solving, self-motivated learning – along with developing their creativity, curiosity, and ethical judgment. Why and how we teach are as important as what we teach, as the effectiveness of students’ learning may be affected by course designs, teaching strategies, student-teacher interactions, and the teacher’s passion and enthusiasm.

Courses I am offering 

*Environmental Geology (GEOL 351) - every spring

Course Description: Environmental geology is geology applied to living. This course is designed to introduce you to our natural environment and the human interactions with our dynamic Earth. We will examine how geologic processes shape the surface, and how these processes and hazards influence human activities (or sometimes the reverse). We will discuss how the scientific methods allow us to ask and answer questions about the Earth. Topics include natural hazards (earthquakes, volcanoes, floods), resource extraction (mining, fossil fuels, groundwater pumping), and pollution (climate change, water quality).

Course Expectation: By taking this course, I hope you will be more informed about how humanity can live responsibly and sustainably on Earth. You will also be able to

• Understand how geologic processes drive and control natural disasters. 
• Understand the interactions between the Earth systems and human activities.
• Demonstrate critical thinking and the use of scientific method through interpretation of geologic and environmental data and writing paper (report).
• Evaluate past, current, and future environmental issues and become aware of the need for improvement of the health of the environment. 

*Hydrogeophysics (GEOL 591/791) - every fall 

Course Description: This course is designed to introduce you the current hydrogeophysics research in determining, predicting, and studying subsurface rock’s physical properties and hydrologic processes associated with groundwater flow, contaminant transport, and microbe- mineral interactions using geophysical measurements at different scales. This course will start with the review of porous media properties, fundamentals of rock physics, then introduce the basic principles of various geophysical approaches, and is followed by case studies. This course combines lectures, literature review and discussion, and student presentations.
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Course Goal: The basic goal of this course is for you to become familiar with different geophysical tools and their applications in the field ‘hydrogeophysics’. By doing this, I hope to develop your understanding and intuition of porous media’s physical properties and the principles of different geophysical methods. You are expected to acquire skills at reading technical peer-reviewed publications deeply to extract key content, refine your scientific writing abilities, and practice and develop academic presentation skills. You will also be able to

• Understand how geophysical techniques help to improve hydrogeological characterization and monitoring approaches.

• Understand how has the field ‘hydrogeophysics’ evolved in recent years in response to the characterization of subsurface features, determination of hydrogeological properties, and soil and groundwater monitoring.
• Demonstrate critical thinking, academic writing, and oral presentation skills through final
  assignment (in the form of writing and presenting a ‘research proposal’). 

*Environmental Geophysics (GEOL 577) - fall 2016

This course is designed to make students

• To learn the basic principles and limitations of several methods of geophysical measurement and data analysis as commonly applied to environmental site characterization.
• To learn to write short professional-quality reports on environmental geophysical surveys.
• To practice the oral presentation of technical information, including critique of others. 

The course is composed of formal lectures, field work and weekly written reports on the data collected, and quizzes. Each week we will hand out a set of notes and suggested readings relating to the current geophysical method and field/lab problem. Weekly reports will be due at the beginning of class the week following the field experiment and a short quiz will be given on the basic principles of the geophysical method presented in the report. ​