Research Expertise: 
Physics Education Research

I study how people think about and learn physics. My major work has focused on developing instructional strategies for advanced undergraduate thermal physics courses. My current research centers on how students use and reason about mathematics in both introductory and advanced physics courses, and the ways in which they synthesize various pieces of information to form a coherent understanding of a particular topic. I am particularly interested in using statistical analyses to measure how student understanding of a particular topic changes during a course.

Honors and Awards:
Invited Plenary Speaker at the Foundations and Frontiers of Physics Education Research Conference  2017
Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings Paper Award Finalist  2010

Member of:
American Association of Physics Teachers (www.aapt.org)
American Physical Society (www.aps.org)

Recent Academic Projects:
Measuring and representing student learning in introductory physics: A main goal of this project is to use statistical analyses to measure the relative “correctness” of various responses to common multiple-choice tests. These results may be used to show how students’ understanding of physics develops during a course, even if they do not choose the correct response.