Teaching
Aggregated student evaluation of overall quality as an instructor for 2017-2021 respondents (194 total).
Awards for Teaching
College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Student Award for Teaching Excellence from The Ohio State University, Apr. 2022 [Link to news article]
John S. Swenton Award for Outstanding Teaching from The Ohio State University, May 2020 [Link to news article]
Student Evaluation Highlights
Course Materials [Representative Selection]
Written Materials
My Guide to Success in Chemistry [Link] was written to provide time-tested advice to new chemistry students with the hope to point them towards habits conducive to success—and to ease their nerves for a subject that has a reputation for being difficult.
The Honors General Chemistry courses I taught used Chemical Principles by Atkins/Jones/Laverman, which explores titration calculations with a simplified version of the systematic treatment of equilibrium. This approach was always challenging for students at first, so I prepared a Titration Calculation Handout [Link] that complements the examples in the text by walking students through more complicated equilibria in greater detail.
The Colorful Chemistry of Transition Metals [Link] covers my favorite topic in chemistry—transition metals—and was created in response to student feedback requesting something to help bridge the gap between general and inorganic chemistry courses.
Interactive Excel Spreadsheets
The Titration Calculator [Link] uses systematic treatment of equilibrium to generate data for titration curves as a function of analyte concentration, volume, and acid dissociation constant(s) for a variety of titration scenarios. This is particularly useful to prepare figures for lecture slides that depict, for example, a series of titration curves that illustrate how the buffer region changes with pKa. (This resource is also useful for generating titration curves for activities/exams!)
Related to the titration calculator above is the Fractional Composition Calculator [Link], which tracks the fractional composition (ɑ) of an acid and its conjugate base(s) as a function of pH. This is extremely useful to help students understand the principal species in solution at particular points in a titration.
The Excel Library of Elementary Reactions [Link] shows a variety of elementary reactions and plots the concentration profiles of the reactant, product, and any intermediate(s) as a function of time. Students can change initial concentration(s) and rate coefficient(s) for the reactions or step(s) therein to illustrate how concentrations would respond to those changes.
I always pair this with the Summary of Kinetic Rate Laws handout [Link].