Learning and discovery start very early in a student’s life. Doing science can start early, too.
I work with high school and college students on bite-sized science projects, where they learn to:
- Encounter unfamiliar processes
- Make science out of real, messy data
- Share their results in professional contexts
In 2015 I was a founding member of the Chilean Young Physicists’ Tournament. We worked with twenty-seven high school students during a month-long school strike. The students worked in teams to build gliders, solder LEDs, and learn basic fluid dynamics, then presented their results in a final tournament. The program is now in its third year and is hosted by the Universidad de Santiago de Chile.
At the University of Colorado, I mentor undergraduate field assistants through the Undergraduate Research Program and the UNAVCO RESESS program. My first student, Clea Bertholet, recently completed her honors thesis on snow bedforms.
I’ve shared Earth Science with the public through numerous outreach lectures. In the last two years, I’ve begun writing about science on Quora. This question-and-answer website gives me an opportunity to hear the questions that most interest the public, and answer them for an audience of three thousand followers.
Finally, I organize introductory backpacking and winter sports trips through the MIT Outing Club and the CU Hiking Club. Winter and wilderness are beautiful – I’d like to get everybody out in them!
