Teaching
Translating my enthusiasm for engineering and acoustics through teaching has helped me grow as a mentor, researcher, and learner. Not only this, I have realized through my teaching efforts that several students have continued pursuing their interests in related fields to engineering. I found my passion for acoustics in a non-conventional manner, and I hope to manifest that dream for others as well.
Teaching Statement
Teaching as an undergraduate
As an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester, I had the opportunity to work alongside several of my professors as a teaching assistant (TA). With my drive to learn as much as I possibly could about sound, and with knowing that to fully comprehend a discipline one must be able to teach it, as was told to me by my mentor, I embraced the challenge of teaching several courses in my department. Through teaching the several of the introductory audio engineering courses, sound design courses, and higher-level acoustics classes I realized a natural and strong passion for education and learning both for myself, and for the students.
AME 140: Introduction to Audio and Music Engineering | Lecture
The introduction course to the Audio and Music Engineering degree. In this class students learned about the fundamentals of sound and vibration, audio, and its interconnection with music and how this discipline translates to industry and research. Students learn to begin coding in MATLAB and apply the theory in class to demonstrate the knowledge they gain through the class. For this course, I graded homework and laboratory material, held office hours, review session for exams, and oversaw exam creation and grading as well.
AME 140: Introduction to Audio and Music Engineering | Laboratory
The laboratory component to the introductory audio and music engineering course. While also being a lecture teaching assistant I was a laboratory TA for the AME140 course too. In the laboratory portion of the course, students were able to demonstrate some of the theory learned during lecture. This includes experiments such as measuring the sound pressure within a tube or building a small amplifier and loudspeaker system. I oversaw one section with other graduate and undergraduate students, we would review course content, get material ready for the laboratory, and help students learn the equipment and comprehend the tangible results they were witnessing in front of them.
AME 140: Introduction to Audio and Music Engineering | Laboratory
The laboratory component to the introductory audio and music engineering course. While also being a lecture teaching assistant I was a laboratory TA for the AME140 course too. In the laboratory portion of the course, students were able to demonstrate some of the theory learned during lecture. This includes experiments such as measuring the sound pressure within a tube or building a small amplifier and loudspeaker system. I oversaw one section with other graduate and undergraduate students, we would review course content, get material ready for the laboratory, and help students learn the equipment and comprehend the tangible results they were witnessing in front of them.
AME 193: Sound Design
Sound design is an applied audio engineering course where students utilize digital audio workstations (DAWs) to compose and build soundscapes for various video assignments such as a news station opening on the television, or movie trailer. Students learn the fundamentals of sound design and how cinema incorporates these crucial audio components within their film composition. The final project in the course is the culmination of a soundscape piece for a trailer of choice by the student that must be at least a minute and a half long that includes all components of sound design techniques. As a teaching assistant for this class, I oversaw and proctored lectures for the course material (such as describing filters and synthesizers), graded assignments, and held office hours to help the students with their projects.
AME 197: Game Design
The game design course is an extension of AME 193 sound design where students learn how to compose music to video games in an asynchronous manner. Utilizing the software Wwise (another DAW) students create soundscapes and musical compositions that follow characters in videogames or different scenes. For this course I graded assignments, helped visiting lecturers with course material, and provided office hours to support students on their projects.
AME 233: Acoustics
The acoustics course involves the engineering physics portion of the AME curriculum. In this class students learn the basics of phasor notation and complex numbers and how this applies to 1D waves on a string, 2D waves on a surface, and 3D waves in air. Students utilize MATLAB to completed homework assignments and to visualize and analyze content learned in the course such as vibrations on a string or understanding and decomposing the acoustic impulse response of a room. For this class I helped design quizzes and exams for the students, held office hours to cover the material reviewed in class, and graded assignments.
Teaching Statement
Providing a learning experience abroad during the pandemic
While studying abroad in the United Kingdom on a Fulbright Scholarship during the 2020 pandemic, I was involved with the engineering outreach team at the University of Southampton called Invent Plus. Through this group I was able to design my own loudspeaker construction project for students in secondary school (middle school) around the city of Southampton. Since larger in-person lessons were not permitted during that time, myself and the Invent Plus group had to design instructional booklets that went along with the loudspeaker construction kits. These booklets included the understanding of the fundamentals of sound, how electrical circuits work and its application in audio, and how to construct the loudspeaker. Over 200 of these loudspeaker packets were distributed around the city during such an intense time. It was extremely rewarding to know that my enthusiasm for engineering and sound was being shared with so many young prospective engineers. As the country began to open back up, we had smaller in-person outreach efforts in Southampton and through that I was able to understand visualize and appreciate the students excitement and enthusiasm for loudspeakers and acoustics.
Duke Pre-College Audio Engineering
Teaching Statement
Duke Pre-College: Audio Engineering
An extraordinary opportunity was offered to me during my first year of study at Duke. Through the Duke Pre-College program, I had the opportunity to create and teach an engineering course for students in middle school around the country, and world. The class I designed was the Duke Pre-College Audio Engineering program. In this two-week course, I guide students through the fundamentals of sound, architectural acoustics, 3D printing, circuit analysis, loudspeaker and audio amplifier design, and live sound engineering. By the conclusion of the class students build their very own stereo pair loudspeaker from materials they either printed or assembled with simple electrical or construction components. It was very rewarding to have students tell me at the end of the class that they wished to continue engineering through the experience they had in this class and would go through the curriculum again. The objective of this class was, and is, to spark that curious engineer that I believe everyone has---my first taught class has delivered that for me. Teaching this course has helped improve my communication skills, understanding of engineering fundamentals, mentorship qualities, and helped me further define my ambitions and goals as a scientist and teacher.
Class of 2022
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Class of 2023
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Triangle Women in STEM Day (Girl Scout STEM Day)
In collaboration with companies in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) area, and the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facilities (SMiF) at Duke, there is an annual outreach event held at the Pratt School of Engineering called Girl Scout STEM Day. This is geared at engaging females (in middle and high school) in the local Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill areas with engineering. Through unique engineering workshops, these students get to a have a hands-on experience learning a specific field of engineering they may be interested in. The SMiF team reached out to me for this event when they learned about my Audio Engineering course. For this we condensed the loudspeaker construction material from my class into a two-hour crash course on speakers and audio. By the end of a few hours of attendance in this workshop students left with knowledge on the fundamentals of sound, and with their very own little boombox! The boombox was built from pre-3D printed shells for housing the loudspeakers which were purchased prior to the workshop, and the audio amplifier which the students spent the few hours learning how to build. By the end of this course most students had sound radiating from their little boombox and seeing the excitement in their eyes and voices further exposed me to the rewards of teaching and learning.
Continuation & Beyond Graduate School
As I continue with my Ph.D. I expect to continue my teaching assistant position for multiple classes within the ECE department, or potentially other departments in the Pratt School of Engineering. I also intend to continue my outreach efforts, and instructor position for the Duke Pre-College program. I hope to innovate the audio engineering course for the Duke Pre-College program by creating a more advanced acoustic and audio signal processing class where students can learn the fundamentals of sound with differential equations, coding, electrical engineering, and practical laboratory experience. To prepare me for faculty and teaching opportunities beyond graduate school, I have enrolled in the certificate in college teaching program, and the emerging leaders institute program at Duke. I also hope to participate in the preparing future faculty program offered by the Duke Graduate School during my fourth year of study which allows me to shadow faculty at local universities within North Carolina. Following graduate school, I will most likely be a post-doctoral fellow at another tier 1 research institution in the US, continuing research to advance the understanding and application of acoustics. Subsequently I will either become a full-time faculty at a research or teaching institution after this experience, or if I join industry or run my own company, I will become an adjunct professor at a university.