Prison education

While in the Bay area, I had the wonderful experience of serving as STEM faculty at Mount Tamalpais College for a couple of years. Through MTC, I taught Intermediate Algebra, Physics I (with Lab), and Statistics for college credit in San Quentin State Prison as lecturer/co-instructor in 2022-2023. In 2022, MTC became the first accredited junior college inside a state prison system. Aside from its compelling personal and philosophical dimensions, prison education is an effective method of improving societal outcomes. The RAND Report on effectiveness of Prison Education Programs pdf provides a meta-analysis of prison education effectivenes studies and finds significantly reduced recidivism (43%) and a >5x excedence of the cost-effectiveness break even point.

At MIT, I continue to participate in prison education as a volunteer with the TEJI-supported Brave Behind Bars (BBB) program and am currently TAing a Python course for incarcerated students.

Other teaching experience

I was a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) at UC Berkeley for ASTRON C10 (Introduction to General Astronomy). GSI-ing for this course was my formative teaching experience, though I also was an undegraduate Physical Sciences TA and research mentor at UT Austin.

Outreach

I repeatedly taught an introductory lesson for high-school students on basic concepts in cosmology semesterly since Fall 2021 through the 1-day SPLASH Berkeley event. I continue to be involved with SPLASH at MIT through the NSF-supported IAIFI.

Astrobites is a grad student-run, AAS supported blog that summarizes recent astrophysical research papers at an undergraduate level. While at Berkeley, I was an author and editor for 2 years, and wrote 14 astrobites - here they are! I also servied as editorial co-chair, developing editorial guidelines, editing and posting 100+ undergraduate research and guest post submissions, and managing the editorial committee.