Teaching statement

Teaching interests

My teaching strengths and interests fall in system dynamics, feedback control, mechatronic systems, and related disciplines, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Courses I am prepared to teach include mechatronics and robotics, system dynamics and control, dynamics and vibrations, feedback control, and capstone design.

Teaching philosophy

Student learning begins with clear communication and expectations. As an instructor, I strive to create an open, approachable learning environment that enables students to genuinely engage with and understand the fundamentals of the concepts being taught, through an interactive lecture environment and open-ended design projects. I believe students learn best in a calm, patient environment that lets them arrive at their own conclusions, an understanding that outlasts the final exam. Once that foundation is in place, the next task is to generate excitement, which I pursue by integrating real-world applications and hands-on lab experiments wherever possible.

As a woman in engineering, I am also deeply committed to fostering inclusive learning spaces that support students from all backgrounds. Representation matters, and I have seen firsthand how meaningful it can be for students, particularly women and other minorities, to see themselves reflected in their instructors. I aim to create classrooms where students feel encouraged to participate, ask questions, and take intellectual risks, knowing their perspectives are valued.

Pedagogy in practice

In courses on dynamics, control, and mechatronics, I put this philosophy into practice through:

• Hardware-in-the-loop labs that pair every derivation, root locus, state-space, frequency response, with a bench-top system or ground/aerial vehicle testbed students can perturb and watch respond.
• Open-ended design projects, rather than single-answer problem sets, so students practice framing a control or estimation problem, not just solving one that's already been posed.
• Worked examples drawn from autonomous vehicles and mobile sensing, tying abstract transfer functions and Bayesian filters to a system students can picture moving through the world.
• Short in-class exercises and root-locus/Bode "chalk talks" before deriving results at the board, so students engage with the intuition before the algebra.
• Regular formative feedback, brief concept checks and office-hours check-ins, so misconceptions surface before the exam rather than on it.

Teaching experience

I have served as a teaching assistant at the University of Utah for ME EN 3230 Mechatronics (Fall 2022, Spring 2024), and in Fall 2024 for both ME EN 6205 System Dynamics and ME EN 6200 Classical Control. In October 2024, I gave a guest lecture on root-locus design for ME EN 5200/6200 Classical Control. My end-of-year teaching evaluations have consistently described me as approachable and effective at explaining concepts. One student wrote that I "clearly cares about the success of the students [and] does a great job explaining concepts when students are confused."

Outreach & mentorship

Beyond the university classroom, I have volunteered in a 3rd–5th grade special education classroom, supporting individualized learning and hands-on activities in math and science, and tutored math and science throughout high school and my undergraduate years. More recently, I have led lab tours and demonstrations for visiting groups, from high school science classes to after-school programs, introducing younger audiences to robotics and autonomous systems. I also bring over 15 years of experience coaching lacrosse, most recently at Westminster University, working with students from 3rd through 12th grade with an emphasis on positive reinforcement, teamwork, and growth through constructive feedback, skills that directly inform my approach as an educator and mentor.