NC State Physics Education Research Group

Current Graduate Students

 Mary Bridget Kustusch
 email: mbkustus at ncsu dot edu

    Mary Bridget was born in Chicago, IL and graduated from North Park University in Chicago in 2004 with a BS in Physics and minors in Math and Biblical Studies. She spent two summers in REU programs, the latter of which introduced her to Physics Education Research (at University of Illinos - Urbana/Champaign). Mary Bridget spent a year gaining experience as an instructor at North Park University and then moved to North Carolina, where she joined the NC State PER group in Spring 2006.
    Mary Bridget is fascinated by the connections among different knowledge representations in physics, especially those that require spatial reasoning. Her dissertation (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/resolver/1840.16/6895) explored the representation and context-dependence of student use of right-hand rules.
   While at NC State, Mary Bridget served as a TA in a SCALE-UP classroom; as a lead TA in the Matter and Interactions laboratories; and as the instructor of a Modern Physics course for engineers. She is now a postdoctoral scholar in the Paradigms in Physics Project at Oregon State Universty.

 Shawn Weatherford
 email: saweathe at ncsu dot edu
 webpage: http://web.mac.com/physics_god

   Shawn is from Corapeake, NC and graduated in 2001 with a BA in Physics and Secondary Science Education from Elon College in Elon, North Carolina. Shawn was a North Carolina Teaching Fellow during his undergraduate studies. For the four years following graduation he taught at Walter M. Williams High School in Burlington, NC as a physics teacher.
    After taking a distance learning course for high school teachers from Bruce Sherwood, Shawn decided to attend graduate school and pursue research in physics education. He began graduate work in Fall 2005 and his research interests are closely related to one of the goals of the Matter & Interactions curriculum. That is, how introductory physics students use computational models to predict 3D visualizations with VPython.
    Shawn is a member of PTEC and closely follows the training of physics teachers at NC State. He stays abreast of innovations in teacher education programs and looks forward to offering insight and advice to academia on collaborations between credential granting institutions and in-service physics teachers. He is also an active member of the North Carolina Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, holding a membership since 1999.
    Shawn has experience working as a TA in the Matter and Interactions laboratory sections and as a SCALE-UP TA. Shawn and Jeff Polak wrote and produced a series of instructional YouTube videos ( http://www.youtube.com/VPythonVideos ) for new VPython users and implemented the use of these videos in the NC State Matter and Interactions lab curriculum. Shawn graduated from N.C. State in 2011. Shawn currently holds a tenure-track appointment at Saint Leo University, University Campus in Saint Leo, Florida as an Assistant Professor of Physics.

 Brandon Lunk
 email: brlunk at ncsu dot edu  
webpage: Coming Soon

   Brandon was born near Watertown, New York and graduated in 2004 with a BS in Physics from UNC Chapel Hill, with a minor in mathematics.   While there, Brandon discovered a passion for teaching and gained experience updating the introductory physics labs and working as a supplementary instructor. After spending a year taking post baccalaureate classes at NCSU while pursuing other endeavors, Brandon discovered PERD and began graduate studies in the fall of 2006.
    Given the increased use of computational modeling in the introductory classrooms, Brandon is interested in how students understand the roll the Momentum Principle (Impulse-Momentum Theorem) plays in an iterative loop. Brandon has also begun applying the methods of discourse analysis to the verbal data that arrises from students and student groups working on computer modeling.
Brandon has experience working as a TA in the conceptual physics lab,
and the Matter and Interactions laboratory sections including a semester as a SCALE-UP TA. Additionally, Brandon has had experience giving lectures to an introductory Modern Physics class.

 Jeff Polak
 email: jmpolak2 at ncsu dot edu  
webpage: Coming Soon

Jeff was born in Greenfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater in 2006 with a BS in Physics, with a minor in Mathematics. Jeff participated in undergraduate research projects UW-W, the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign, and NC State, all in Physics Education Research. He has been a TA for Matter and Interactions Labs as well as for the SCALE-UP class.

Jeff's research interests include how students apply their understanding of mathematics to physics and how the same mathematics concepts might be treated differently depending on the physics context. He is also interested in the design of instructional materials that strengthen the connections between physics and relevant mathematics concepts.

 Meghan West
 email: mjwest3 at ncsu dot edu

    Meghan was born in Walnut Creek, CA. She graduated from the University of California at San Diego in 2004 with a BS in Physics and minors in Psychology and Mathematics (and one class in Physics Education Research (PER) that sparked her interest in the field). Meghan taught one year of high school Physics and Physical Science with Teach for America and participated in an independent research project at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. Meghan began graduate studies at NCSU in the fall of 2008. She has been a TA for Matter and Interactions (M&I) Mechanics and E&M labs, as well as for the SCALE-UP class.
    Meghan is interested in exploring TA-student interactions and is currently focusing on analyzing socratic dialog between TAs and groups of students in the M&I mechanics lab course.

Bin Xiao
 email: bxiao at ncsu dot edu

Bin was born in the city of Wuhan in China, and he graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2008 with a BS in Physics. After graduation, He worked as a research assistant in the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences studying single molecule biophysics. Then he began his graduate studies at NC State in the fall of 2009.
Bin is interested in seeing how problem solver's instantaneous confidence changes during the process of solving problems.
Bin has TA experience in Matter and Interactions laboratory sections as well as both algebra and calculus-based traditional physics labs.

Katie Foote
 email: ktfoote at ncsu dot edu 
webpage: https://sites.google.com/a/ncsu.edu/kathleenfoote/

Katie was born in Farmington, CT and graduated from Providence College in Rhode Island in May, 2010 with a double degree of a BS in Applied Physics and a BA in Physics Secondary Education with minors in Math and Asian Studies.  She spent a summer in a PER REU program at the University of Minnesota, working with Dr. Ken Heller to explain the gender gap in concept test scores in introductory physics courses.  She spent a couple summers helping to teach at the Center for Talented Youth summer camp in both Nuclear Science and Introduction to Engineering courses.  She began her studies in North Carolina in the fall of 2010.  She has continued to expand her teaching experience at NCSU as a TA in an E&M Matter and Interactions course for engineers