A more extensive version of my CV, with additional details compared to the PDF version I use for applications.
Bachelor of Psychology
University of Pittsburgh
GPA: 3.609
Sample of Coursework:
Associate in Science
Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC)
GPA: 3.74
Sample of Coursework:
SAGA Innovations
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Role: Lead Tutor
I worked in-person among a team of three in a high school to help around 100 first-year students learn Algebra 1, along with one other lead tutor, the site director, and a number of remote tutors, with the me and the other lead tutor working with the students on ALEKS or via a variety of activities we came up with.
In addition, to help guide the tutoring and test the effectiveness of the tutoring, we help to administer tests to the students.
There were also multiple instances of working with the school to help ease the workload of the teachers, mainly by helping to administer tests.
My time with SAGA ended earlier then I would have liked, but I came out of it with positive memories and some additional ideas I may want to look into in the future relating to improving education.
Also a deep and abiding hatred of Large Language Models and their possible usage in educational contexts, but that is better covered in a dedicated blog post.
Learning Research and Development Center
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Role: Research Assistant
I started this position as part of the McNair program in the summer between my first and second years at the University of Pittsburgh, which were my third and fourth years of college overall.
The project was about how students in an introductory physics class felt about their positive experience in the class, focusing on how it correlated with the usage of resources, collected via a survey given to the students of the course in exchange for extra credit.
This was done due to the project focusing on the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat being applied to students of the course as a possible explanation for various issues with subjects such as physics.
I primarily worked under one of the P.I.'s, Dr. Timothy Nokes-Malach; who was also my mentor for both the McNair program and during the writing of my undergraduate thesis, with the main task I was assigned being the creation and testing of a rubric to assess the answers to the open-ended questions included in the survey.
The results of my work can be observed in my thesis, with the results showing this as an area that may be worth pursuing further, though with more questions being needed in order to both evaluate other possible variables that relate to the topic and to ensure clarity to some of the other variables, in particular the category of what positive experiences did students have in the course.
I greatly enjoyed my time as a research assistant, as I felt like I had learned a lot from the experience and had enjoyed working with many of the other people in the lab.
Jumpstart
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Role: Corp Member and Team Leader
I was a Corp Member during the first year, and was a Team Leader in my second year with the program.
Our main goal was to take a book that was preselected by the national Jumpstart program and use it as a bridge to help preschoolers expand their vocabulary, as well some other concepts.
This was largely done by asking questions about the book ot the students, preparing small presentations to explain the concepts that the book helped to introduce, and loosely structured play that focused on expanding on the ideas relating to the core topic for the week.
The book and topic changed week from week, with the team working separatedly to prepare their individual materials, that being the book and one of the various play options for the children we were assigned, with us having two sessions with the students a week, along with one to three hours of individual time in the classroom.
Meetings about how well we were doing and what we needed to do were held either before or after sessions, with my time as a team leader requiring me to attend an additional meeting with the team leaders and a meeting with the site director.
The team leader meetings were about the overall state of both our teams and what may need to be modified for out activities for our sessions two weeks in the future, while the site director meetings were one on one affairs to discuss any concerns that the members of my team may have had, with some issues calling for keeping who had the concern hidden, though this was a rarity.
When it came to the work, the biggest was honestly getting to the preschool, as the first year saw me and my team spend a large amount of time and effort walking through very hilly terrain while bringing along our supplies, and the second saw a fair amount of travel via the bus, which had led to some issues time to time.
Overall, I found my time here to be one I look back on fondly, expecially with the variety of activities that the program did alongside our work, and the children were always a delight to see.
We use the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat in an effort to better understand how the types of resources and experiences students draw upon to navigate the demands in an introductory physics course. We attempt to quantify students’ open-ended responses from a survey to find what experiences they find positive and what resources they use to try to succeed in an introductory physics course at four different timepoints across a semester in two different cohorts. The categories for positive experiences were achievement and competence, working with others, learning about the subject, other good, and no good and negative. The resource categories were individual, classroom, outside, and other people. We found that students' experiences emphasize achievement and competence in a course above working with others and learning more about the subject. For resources, students use more classroom and social support than outside and individual resources, with instances of classroom resources increasing over the semester and outside, social support, and individual resources were reported less often over the same time period. This research has implications for future research into students’ learning in STEM subjects.