Huffington Post STEM mentorship program
One of my newest "out of the lab" activities is mentoring two high school girls who are interested in going into a STEM career. It has been really fun to talk with them and see their excitement for physics. I can't wait to see where their careers take them.
Figure Skating
Although I spend most of my time working at Dartmouth on the BARREL mission, I try to lead a balanced life. It's good for the soul and something that my undergraduate advisor Mark Engebretson always reinforced with us.
Outside of work I am a figure skating coach. It's something I have always loved and something that has surprisingly come in handy when teaching physics. I started skating when I was about two and a half years old. My competitive years ended when I tore my ACL, but that allowed me to really focus on teaching skating. I've taught students ranging in age from two years old to adults. Kids really just "feel" how to skate and seem to prefer a more "how does this feel, can you feel this" kind of teaching. However with adults I've found it really helps to tell them why a technique works a certain way and the physics behind the technique. The adults don't always seem to trust their bodies like the kids, but they will trust the physics. That said, all my students, no matter the age, learn about center of mass and moment of Inertia. I am a physicist at heart and will always - given the chance - encourage my students, friends, and/or family to learn about the physics around them.
Skating also came in handy when I taught the labs for a sports science class. Not only did skating give me some great examples of moment of Inertia, center of mass and newton's three laws, but it also gave me credibility with the students. Many of the students in the class were athletes themselves or planned to become coaches or physical education teachers. They figured that since it was a physics class, obviously the lecturer would not have been involved with any sports activities as a kid and definitely not today. Once I started mentioning that I had trained with olympic champions and coaches, that my uncle was an olympic track coach whom I would compare notes with, they started to trust that I might know a thing or two about why physics is so important to sports science. I've also been lucky enough to work with some of my figure skating students on their science fair projects. It has given me a way to try to help inspire them to pursue a career in STEM.
Outside of work I am a figure skating coach. It's something I have always loved and something that has surprisingly come in handy when teaching physics. I started skating when I was about two and a half years old. My competitive years ended when I tore my ACL, but that allowed me to really focus on teaching skating. I've taught students ranging in age from two years old to adults. Kids really just "feel" how to skate and seem to prefer a more "how does this feel, can you feel this" kind of teaching. However with adults I've found it really helps to tell them why a technique works a certain way and the physics behind the technique. The adults don't always seem to trust their bodies like the kids, but they will trust the physics. That said, all my students, no matter the age, learn about center of mass and moment of Inertia. I am a physicist at heart and will always - given the chance - encourage my students, friends, and/or family to learn about the physics around them.
Skating also came in handy when I taught the labs for a sports science class. Not only did skating give me some great examples of moment of Inertia, center of mass and newton's three laws, but it also gave me credibility with the students. Many of the students in the class were athletes themselves or planned to become coaches or physical education teachers. They figured that since it was a physics class, obviously the lecturer would not have been involved with any sports activities as a kid and definitely not today. Once I started mentioning that I had trained with olympic champions and coaches, that my uncle was an olympic track coach whom I would compare notes with, they started to trust that I might know a thing or two about why physics is so important to sports science. I've also been lucky enough to work with some of my figure skating students on their science fair projects. It has given me a way to try to help inspire them to pursue a career in STEM.
Photography
I love to take photos, it's a bit of an addiction. Even though science itself is a very creative process I think it's incredibly valuable to have another creative outlet, especially one that does not have to be peer reviewed. It gives the brain a chance to relax. My philosophy with photography, especially with the advent of dslrs, is to take thousands of photos. Out of thousands of photos, and I mean thousands, like gigabytes of memory, you can normally find a few that are okay and maybe if I am lucky, one that is "WOW, did I really take that?".
As a scientist you have years of schooling with little pay, once you get out of school you have a glorified internship for an unknown amount of time (Postdoc), and then if you are lucky you can become a researcher at a lab , a Prof. or adjunct Prof. where you get very little pay for your education level and the number of hours that you work a week. However you do get to have a job that you love. One of the other great benefits to being a scientist is traveling. You have to travel to conferences, to work with collaborators, and sometimes just to collect your data. I always bring my camera. You might be sitting in meetings for most of the day, but there is always lunch or on the walk to dinner when you might be able to capture a few shots. At the Cluster conference in September 2013 held in Tromsø Norway we had a field trip out to the Tromsø EISCAT radar. Once all 80 or so scientist and their significant others got off the bus I swear everyone pulled out cameras. It is almost forgone conclusion that if you are a physicist (or at least a space physicist) you are also an amateur photographer.
As a scientist you have years of schooling with little pay, once you get out of school you have a glorified internship for an unknown amount of time (Postdoc), and then if you are lucky you can become a researcher at a lab , a Prof. or adjunct Prof. where you get very little pay for your education level and the number of hours that you work a week. However you do get to have a job that you love. One of the other great benefits to being a scientist is traveling. You have to travel to conferences, to work with collaborators, and sometimes just to collect your data. I always bring my camera. You might be sitting in meetings for most of the day, but there is always lunch or on the walk to dinner when you might be able to capture a few shots. At the Cluster conference in September 2013 held in Tromsø Norway we had a field trip out to the Tromsø EISCAT radar. Once all 80 or so scientist and their significant others got off the bus I swear everyone pulled out cameras. It is almost forgone conclusion that if you are a physicist (or at least a space physicist) you are also an amateur photographer.