Susan Wei

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TEACHING STATEMENT
Susan Wei (susanwe@live.unc.edu)
There are various roles an educator plays. They range from formal to informal, professional to personal. In what follows, I will discuss the ways in which my teaching philosophy has been shaped by experiences with these dierent aspects.

Formal classroom instruction

For four semesters at the University of California at Berkeley, I led discussion sections for introductory mathematics and statistics courses. My responsibilities included giving hour-long lectures, creating quizzes, and grading assignments. This experience helped me greatly in developing eective pedagogical skills for formal classroom instruction. In my teaching, I have encountered many dierent learning styles. Some students are sequential learners, others are global learners; some process information introspectively, others require active engagement in discussion. A good teacher should aspire to accommodate the individual needs of every student. There are eective techniques that one can implement to appeal to a wide range of learning styles. For instance, I have found it useful to intersperse the main lecture with smaller activity units. This can be as simple as assigning small groups of students to work together on exercises. This type of activity benets students who like to process information actively through engagement in discussion. Another technique I have received favorable feedback on from students in my statistics classes is the discussion of misuses of statistics in current-topic issues. Not only is this amusing to students, it also motivates the importance of statistics in other disciplines. This helps students who like to see the big picture of why they are learning what they are learning. In addition to teaching delivery styles, good strategies for giving and receiving feedback is also an important component of eective pedagogy. As a typical classroom exhibits a wide spectrum of mathematical maturity and aptitude, I like to administer a short assessment questionnaire at the beginning of the semester to get a sense of where each student is starting from. This information allows me to address the weaknesses in my students as well as to identify students for whom to assign more advanced readings. For receiving feedback, I nd it eective to ask students to ll out one-minute questionnaires at the end of each class to answer questions such as what did you learn in class today or what was the most dicult concept encountered. The beginning of the next meeting can feature a short discussion of common responses.

Discovery-based teaching
Besides formal classroom instruction, I also have experience in encouraging discovery-based learning. The DeCal Program at the University of California at Berkeley is a collection of courses for students created and facilitated by students. As a freshman, I created a DeCal course on the mathematics of the Rubiks Cube which I went on to teach for ve semesters. I was motivated to create the class as a way to expose students of all levels of mathematical aptitude to the wide-ranging applications of mathematics in an approachable manner. The course focused on illustrating concepts of group theory in abstract algebra using the Rubiks Cube. My role in the DeCal course was actually more of a facilitator than a teacher. The course was structured so that at the beginning of the semester, students signed up to present dierent topics. These topics were often quite open-ended, enabling students to follow their own curiosity and interests in choosing the specics of what they would like to present. I met with students outside of class to answer questions and help them prepare. During class, I facilitated the student presentations and encouraged active discussions. My eorts were rewarded with the class being one of the most popular DeCal oerings at Berkeley.

Mentoring
In my teaching experience thus far, I have only been a few years older than my students. In many ways this has worked to my advantage because I can more easily identify with the challenges they face. Later as a professor, I hope to continue the same type of rapport I have enjoyed with undergraduate students in the past. Over the years, my role in mentoring undergraduate students has evolved to include beginning graduate students as well. I am the rst person in my Ph.D. program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to apply for and receive the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. I always encourage students in my program to apply and I make a special eort to be available to answer questions about the Fellowship application process as well as oer feedback on application materials. My own personal path to a PhD in statistics was a circuitous one. I tried many dierent majors in college before I nally gained the condence that I was good enough for mathematics. As there have been a few teachers in my past who were crucial in convincing me to pursue a PhD, I want to advocate on behalf of students who, unbeknownst to themselves, show promise and simply need someone to believe in them.

http://www.swei.web.unc.edu/