Out of graduate school, I worked as a high school science teacher and grew to love being a teacher. After becoming disillusioned with the K-12 environment, I moved to a career path as a mechatronics engineer. While I enjoyed this work, I missed the education field and feeling like I was making a positive difference in my community. I knew that I did not want to return to K-12, but I wasn't sure where I wanted to go. My wife - who is an academic advisor - brought to my attention an advertised academic advising position in the Department of Engineering Education serving first-year engineering students. It brought together my love for education with my expertise in STEM. I applied for the job and got it! Since then, I've grown into academic advising and worked collaboratively with the wonderful people in my department to serve first-year engineering students.

An academic advisor is someone who helps college students with academic planning, connecting with student support resources, and generally helping students navigate the university system. Through this work, I make connections with offices all around campus so that I can stay updated on what resources are available for students. My particular population of students is first-year engineering students, who are generally very bright, but often have to deal with issue transitioning from high school to college. I specialize in helping students with those transitional issues, and helping them to choose which of our 14 engineering majors is the right fit for their goals, interestes, and aptitudes.

I enjoy learning about how people learn. I often collaborate with experts on engineering education hand-in-hand applying research to practice to help students be more successful. I also get to collaborate on conducting and publishing research on academic advising and related topics. In this process, I've also gotten to work on my Ph.D. in Engineering Education, completely through the use of tuition waivers I get as an employee benefit.

This is a learning institution, and there are so many opportunities for employees to gain skills for free. Take advantage of these learning opportunties.

I have helped hundreds of students to make the most of their college experiences. My favorite things to see each semester are the notes that my students send me thanking me for helping them to connect with their people or to be successful in a class that scared them. Aggregated, those impacts are my greatest acheivement.