Instructor: 2022-Present (7 Semesters)
Enrollment: ~120 students (Fall), ~50 students (Spring)
Alaska isn't a backdrop for this course — it's the curriculum. Students work through problems grounded in the real constraints of remote infrastructure, extreme cold, and resource scarcity. For many, this is their first engineering course; I design it so they leave with a concrete sense of what engineers actually do — and whether engineering is the right path for them.
Instructor: 2022-Present (8 Semesters)
Enrollment: 4 Sections; ~65 students (Fall), ~55 students (Spring)
Most students encounter physical fabrication for the first time in this lab. I structure it so their first prototype is intentionally imperfect — the real learning happens in the redesign. By the end, every student has designed, built, and iterated on something tangible, which changes how they approach engineering problems in every subsequent course.
Instructor: Fall 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Enrollment: ~20 students
Description: Application of numerical tools, including software, to typical engineering design problems. Selected topics from all fields of engineering.
Numerical methods are only useful if students trust them — and trust comes from understanding their limits. I pair every algorithm with a problem where naive application fails, forcing students to think critically about convergence, error, and assumptions. MATLAB is the vehicle, but engineering judgment is the destination.
Instructor: Spring 2024, 2025, 2026
Lab TA: Spring 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
Enrollment: ~20 students
Description: Testing and evaluation of components and energy systems such as pumps, fans, engines, heat exchangers, refrigerators and heating/power plants.
There's a moment in every lab session when a student's measurement doesn't match the textbook prediction — and that's exactly where I want them. Students don't just record data; they interrogate it, quantify uncertainty, revisit assumptions, and refine their models. That process is closer to real engineering work than any clean derivation.
Instructor: Fall 2022
Enrollment: ~15 students
Description: Airfoil theory in subsonic flow. Performance, stability and control of aircraft. Aircraft design.
Flight is one of those topics where physical intuition and mathematical formalism need to develop together. I use design exercises — not just analysis — to force students to make tradeoffs between stability, performance, and weight early in the course. By the time we reach control, they already have an instinct for why it matters.
Instructor: Spring 2023
Enrollment: ~16 students
Description: Aerodynamics of non-lifting and lifting airfoils in incompressible irrotational flow, wings of finite span, the Navier-Stokes equations, boundary layers, numerical methods, supersonic and transonic flow past airfoils, rocket aerodynamics, rocket drag.
This is a mathematically demanding course, and I don't shy away from that. But the Navier-Stokes equations mean nothing if students can't visualize what the flow is doing. I pair the formalism with numerical simulations and physical flow demonstrations so the math stays connected to something real. The supersonic and rocket sections are where students tend to light up — the physics gets strange and interesting fast.
Instructor: Spring 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022
Enrollment: ~100 students (Fall), ~35 students (Spring)
Description: Engineering Science 101 is intended to provide an overview of the engineering profession and introduce students to engineering problems and solutions. The course focuses on developing the basic skills in approaching engineering problems and applying basic skills in mathematics and physics. Emphasis is placed on technical writing and using engineering communication tools: word processing, graphs, computer graphics and use of spreadsheets. Students will also participate in small groups on a term project, an opportunity to experience teamwork.
This course served as the gateway to the program for nearly a decade. I treated the team project not as a capstone checkbox but as the organizing spine of the semester — every technical skill found its way into students' project work. Watching first-semester students shift from uncertainty to presenting a functioning prototype is what keeps this kind of teaching worthwhile.
Instructor: Spring 2022
Enrollment: ~25 students
Description: Basic principles of propulsion: turbojet, turboprop and rocket engines. Fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of flow in nozzles, compressors, combustors and turbines. Liquid and solid propellant rockets. Heat transfer in rocket motors and nozzles. Design and testing methods for components of propulsion systems.
Propulsion is where thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer converge — and where students finally see why they studied all three. I structure the course so each engine type builds on the last, and the design and testing component at the end asks students to apply everything at once. The messiness of that integration is the point.
Instructor: Spring 2022
Lab TA: Fall 2015, 2018, 2020
Enrollment: ~50 students (Fall), ~35 students (Spring)
Description: Basic computer programming, in C/C++, with applications from all fields of engineering. Introduction to MATLAB.
Programming is often taught as syntax memorization. I focus instead on computational thinking — how to break an engineering problem into logic a machine can execute. The transition from C/C++ to MATLAB mid-semester is intentional: students who struggle through low-level logic first find MATLAB's abstractions far more intuitive and powerful.
Lab TA: Spring 2013, 2019, 2020, 2021
Enrollment: ~25 students
Description: Properties of engineering materials. Crystal structure, defect structure, structure and properties, aspects of metal processing, heat treatment, joining, testing, and failure analysis for engineering applications and design.
My role here was as a lab teaching assistant, supporting hands-on failure analysis and materials testing. Watching students connect a fracture surface to a processing decision — and trace that back to a design consequence — reinforced how much engineering intuition is built at the bench, not on the board.