⚠️ NOTE: This page is a work in progress. 🚧

Enze desk       Enze teaching

(photo credit: Emma Ancel 📸)

I absolutely love teaching and I am excited by the opportunity to help students succeed—academically, professionally, and personally. I also enjoy learning about research in STEM education, with a focus on curriculum design, informatics/AI education, and universal design for learning. 🧠

Contents

  1. Advising
  2. Projects
  3. In the classroom

Advising 💡

No matter how I design my courses, it doesn’t change the fact that the majority of your learning will take place outside of the classroom and often in conversation with others. I certainly would not be where I am today without the support of countless mentors who have dedicated their time to offer me advice and opportunities. That’s why I try to make myself as available as possible for students and my door will always be open for you. Here are some examples of the things we can talk about; but even if I don’t have answers to all of your questions, I can likely connect you with someone who does!

  • Can you explain [this concept] to me? Certainly, and I’ll try to do a better job than ChatGPT! I will expect these types of questions from my students, but even if you’re not, I can give it a shot and I’m confident we’ll work out a satisfying explanation together.
  • Should I major in MSE? What does it even mean to be a “materials scientist?” Let me try to convince you the answers are yes! and everything. 😁
  • What courses should I take? How do I make a four-year plan? It can be daunting to have the next four years “figured out,” so I’m happy to chat about options. Hint: things never work out the way we expect, evident by my own four-year plan.
  • Can I do research in MSE as an undergrad? You’re in luck! The MSE Department offers many undergraduate research opportunities, including the flagship Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Undergraduate Research Grants (URG) in Winter/Spring quarter. Both are based on applications and we will try to match you to a research group with a good fit. Both programs are great learning opportunities with a small stipend.
  • Can I do research with you? I can serve as an informal mentor, but I cannot serve as your formal advisor. Luckily, our department has excellent Faculty who do impactful, interdisciplinary research that I’m happy to connect you with. That being said, I am always thinking about education-related projects and I welcome eager students who want to collaborate and make a lasting impact.
  • After graduation, should I work, do a Masters, or do a PhD? Should I do all of them? Like all the other topics here, this is a personal decision and I’m happy to be a sounding board as you weigh your priorities.
  • Relatedly, what can I do with a [X] degree in MSE? Good question! I am of the opinion (biased, obv) that MSE sets you up, both technically and professionally, for any career. So let’s chat about what interests you and how you wish to make an impact in the world. 💪🏼
  • Fellowships seem like a ton of work; is it worth applying for the GRFP, NDSEG, CSGF, etc.? Absolutely, for so many reasons. Let’s chat!
  • How do I talk to Faculty? What if they haven’t replied to my emails? Haha, a perennial problem! Happy to discuss further, as it kinda depends on what you’re going for; while I can’t promise you’ll get a response, perhaps we can figure out a way to still get you what you want.
  • Do you have tips for improving science communication? Yes, great question! If you are asking about writing help, I will encourage you to check out the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking or the Technical Communication Program in Huang Engineering. If you’re asking about visual illustrations and plots, there are a few books out there like The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, and I’ve also created curricula and guides about creating figures in software. You are also free to use my Stanford MSE-themed templates for documents, presentations, and LaTeX if you like them!
  • How did you end up in your current role? Ha—that’s a question that took ten years, several degrees, a lot of soul searching, and a whole lotta luck to finally answer. Happy to chat more about this!
  • And, if by some odd chance: Can you teach me how to use atomistic simulations to study planar defects? 😂 Why happily… never thought anyone would ask…

Of course, our conversations can extend beyond these topics and I look forward to chatting with you!

Projects 📖

Although I am not a principal investigator (PI, aka Faculty), it doesn’t mean we can’t build things together. Here are some longer-term projects that I am thinking about, in no particular order of priority. These involve more extended conversations, 1+ quarters of weekly effort, and depending on the project and timing, we may be able to arrange some compensation for your efforts. If one of them sounds interesting to you, we can discuss it and see if it’s something we can pursue together. If you have your own ideas, I’d also be interested in knowing how I can support you.

  • Course development. This can take a variety of forms, such as:
    • Developing an entirely new course. This not only requires the most effort, but also some convincing to the department that it is necessary. As we already have a lot of technical MSE courses, one course topic that particularly excites me is data visualization and communication.
    • Redesign an existing course. This may still require significant effort, but it’s an important consideration to continually update our courses to match societal developments. These courses may not have been offered for quite some time, such as MATSCI 156 (energy materials) or MATSCI 166 (materials informatics).
    • Creating learning modules. Ever taken a course and wished one of the topics could be explained better? Maybe you encountered it again later in your career and heard a better explanation. Here’s an opportunity to create some targeted materials that can enhance student learning, with the scope being up to you. It’s similar to the previous bullet, but likely at a smaller scale.
  • Curriculum support. I envision this to be slightly different from the previous section because some enhancements aren’t course-specific, but rather the MSE program as a whole. These could include:
    • Additional support (workshops, resources, etc.) for a particular aspect of the MSE program, such as undergraduate Honors or Research.
    • Additional workshops and guides for a particular milestone, such as fellowship applications, the PhD qualifying exam, or primers/prerequisites for unfamiliar students.
    • Program restructuring (e.g., course requirements and sequencing) to better align with present/future trends in the field. This will involve data collection and analysis (e.g., perhaps from alumni) and I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.
  • Recruitment and Community. These two things go hand in hand. You can’t just invite someone to the dance—you gotta dance with them too.
    • How can we, in the wake of the SFFA court rulings, continue to attract diverse individuals to MSE and broaden participation in STEM?
    • Why does a Stanford student choose the MSE Major? Or perhaps even more illuminating: Why does a Stanford student not choose the MSE Major? Gathering this data will greatly inform where to prioritize our efforts.
    • How can we foster collaborations and communications among students in the MSE community? What does it take for techniques that are successful in the classroom to have a lasting impact in the general setting?

I want to conclude this section by saying that you can make an impact at any level, whether you’re a first-year undergraduate or fifth-year PhD student. To give you some examples of what I’ve personally worked on:

  • As an undergrad at Stanford, I took MATSCI 142 quantum mechanics with Prof. Aaron Lindenberg. I loved the course so much that I relearned the material by writing a coursereader for the class, which is still used today.
  • As an undergrad at Stanford, I was the undergrad rep on the informal MATSCI Advisory Board, where we met to share our experiences and concerns to the Department. It appears that these updates have been replaced by the regular Town Halls.
  • As a TA at Stanford, I wrote a new section for the CME 104 coursereader and combed through the CME 100/104 coursereaders for typos, all of which Vadim was happy to incorporate.
  • As a TA at Berkeley, I applied for a course improvement grant and created the inaugural in-class poster session for their materials characterization laboratory course.
  • As a PhD student, I wrote a lot of curricula to teach materials informatics, some for summer workshops and some for MSE courses, the latter of which I conducted a small educational study with institutional review board approval.
  • As a PhD student, I was inspired by the Stanford MSE Colloquium Pizza Hour 🍕 (rip 💀) to lead “C3: Coffee, Cookies, and Community” at Berkeley MSE prior to each Thursday seminar, which I did for the entirety of my degree.

There are many other members of the Stanford MSE community, past and present, who have contributed to the success of the department. We look to you for the future. 🫵🏼

In the classroom 👨🏼‍🏫

This is more relevant for applications than teaching, but you can see some of my philosophy in my teaching statement that I submitted to Stanford. My corresponding teaching demo is representative of how I’d teach a lesson.

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