My goals as a teacher is to help students develop the scientific skills and knowledge to answers questions of their own making and share those answers with others around them.

To accomplish this task, my classes are tightly tied to fieldtrips, labs, and problems sets that require original thinking and synthesis of real data. Answers that address questions and hypotheses in these labs can only be valid in so far as they present a reasoned analysis of the data in comparison to an idealized model. Similarly, results from these analyses must be presented in the form of written reports and presentations.

The other aspect of my teaching is a focus on mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students through research.

Research -- learning something new through rigorous, logical investigation -- is where human imagination and the natural world meet. Both in the class-room and as a mentor to my students, my goal is to provide students a chance to investigate their own questions. By the end of the research project a student will have learned new geological concepts and discovered something no one knew before they began their work.

Finally, I share my experience with students.

This means that I discuss career and academic choices, and when possible (and where wanted) give advice. For this aspect of teaching, I act as a prompt to generate and guide questions about what could come next or as a resource to address questions students have already discovered.