Teaching

“I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” – Confucius, 450 BC

My philosophy of teaching is student-centric that I respect students as important individuals who should be equally educated and cultivated towards independent critical thinkers and autonomous learners, in regardless of gender, ethnicity, nationality and physical status. I promote intrinsic motivation by internally trigger their desire to learn and solve challenging problems through interactive active learning methods and early informal classroom feedback.

Awards and Honors

Racheff Teaching Fellow, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, 2013-2014

Excellent Teacher ranked by their student, MSE 101, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Fall 2013

Graduate Teacher Certificate, awarded by Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, University of Illinois, May-2014
(for participating in a pre-semester teaching development program; teaching a minimum of two semesters at Illinois; having an observation of, and reflecting on, your teaching; using informal early feedback and end-of-semester feedback from your students for two semesters; and participating in a minimum of six hours of teaching development workshops.)

 

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant, Polymer Laboratory Class (Senior-level, MSE 452)
Aug 2011 – Dec 2013

  • Planned, organized and oversaw course and lab progress
  • Developed quizzes, exams and take-home labs as a new initiative
  • Organized and lead weekly lab sessions, provided guidance in class and grading
  • Re-designed the curriculum to remove lab topics with outdated equipment
  • Office hours every week

Teaching Assistant and Instructor, Materials in Today’s World (Introductory, MSE 101)
Aug 2013 – Dec 2013

  • Promote intrinsic motivation through novel materials demonstration in phase transformation, viscoelastic effects, 3D stereo-printing..etc
  • Developed lecture “Biomaterials: Flexible Electronics” as part of the biomaterials topic, lead discussion sections

Girls Learning About Materials Summer Camp, Biomaterials
July 2014

  • Developed hands-on workshop and lab demo for 30 local high school girls
  • Introduce flexible and stretchable biosensors with inspiring skin-mounted electronics demo
  • Workshop: 1) Skin integration of metal thin-film, 2) dissolvable electronics and substrates

 

Mentoring Experience

Graduate: Jialun Liu, Kaile Chen

Undergraduate: Gil-Woo Kong, Sang Heon Lee, Hyun Jin Kim, Samuel Kaufman, Qiwen Chen, Lingqing Yan, Hank Liu, Max Lai, Daizhen Li, Hang Yu, Chuxuan Wang, Weicheng Jiang

Alumni: Jialun Liu (Freescale), Kaile Chen (IM Flash), Gil-Woo Kong (UCLA Master), Sang Heon Lee (UCSD PhD), Hyun Jin Kim (UCSB PhD)

 

Minor

College Teaching, College of Education (In progress)

Coursework: College Teaching and Academic Careers (EOL 585)
Jan 2014 – May 2014

  • Scholarly study of innovative pedagogy
  • Classroom research project, syllabus reconstruction, teaching philosophy
  • Classroom research project: How do pre-semester trainings in culture awareness, pedagogy and linguistic help Asian international teaching assistants improve their teaching effectiveness in higher education within the context of credibility and efficacy?