teaching

I teach astronomy and statistics with real data and open-ended problems. Active learning works. Across 225 studies, students in lecture-only courses were 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in courses with active learning (Freeman et al. 2014). Active learning also narrows the gaps in exam scores and pass rates for students from groups underrepresented in STEM (Theobald et al. 2020).

how I teach

• I keep lectures short. Most of the class goes to problems that students work through in small groups while I walk around and help.
• Exercises start with a scaffold, so students with less programming experience start on the same footing, and build toward projects the students design themselves.
• In labs, we have students compare their results, work out why they disagree, and improve the measurement. In a controlled study, that cycle improved students’ critical thinking (Holmes, Wieman & Bonn 2015). In Applied Statistics at Copenhagen, students measure g with a pendulum and an inclined plane and build a full uncertainty budget. Tilted tables and pendulums measured to the ceiling show up in the results, sometimes hilariously.
• Final assessments are things researchers actually produce, like an uncertainty budget or a short research letter, and credit is spread across problem sets, projects, and exams.
• I survey students before, during, and after a course about their expectations, workload, and confidence, and adjust the course while it is still running.

where it started

I studied physics at the University of St Andrews. Its five-year MPhys fills the honours years with specialist modules taught by researchers in their own fields (computational and observational astrophysics, extragalactic astronomy, advanced data analysis) and ends with a year-long research project; mine was on post-starburst galaxies with Vivienne Wild. Being taught by the people doing the research, and then doing some of my own, is what I try to give my students. As a student, I also ran weekly sessions at the university’s Napier Observatory for five years, and as student president I introduced a mid-semester survey so instructors could adjust their courses before the end of term.

courses taught

• Research Topics in Astrophysics, UMass Amherst
  Fall 2023 – BSc level, 12 students, co-taught with Prof. Yun; team research projects on the COSMOS2020 catalog, each ending in a short research letter
• Nordic Optical Telescope Summer School, University of Copenhagen
  Summer 2021 – Grad level, 12 students, TA under Prof. Fynbo
• Applied Statistics: From Data to Results, University of Copenhagen
  Fall 2020 – Grad level, 160 students, senior TA under Prof. Petersen | webpage
  Fall 2019 – Grad level, 140 students, TA under Prof. Petersen | webpage

outcomes

• Best Science Course at the University of Copenhagen, Applied Statistics teaching team, 2021
• One Applied Statistics student, Christian Jespersen, went on to a PhD at Princeton and is now a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the University of Toronto.
• Since 2019, I have mentored 16 student researchers, and my students have led five papers, one of them as a UMass undergraduate. See the group page for who they are and where they went.

informal teaching

• Shores of the Cosmic Ocean, MIT Splash
  Fall 2026 – a course for high-school students, in the weekend program I attended as a student
• Observing Director, Napier Observatory, University of St Andrews
  2013–2018 – weekly telescope sessions for 100+ students
• Public observing, sky tours, and planetarium shows at Frosty Drew, Olin, and Maria Mitchell Observatories and Mystic Seaport, plus Astronomy on Tap in Copenhagen (co-founder) and Boston (volunteer)