Physics Graduate Students Honored for Teaching Assistantships
Heidi Opdyke
- Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
- Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-9982
Just like the universe depends on the fundamental laws of physics, Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Physics depends on its graduate student teaching assistants. This year, the department honored three teaching assistants for their contributions and their dedication to educating undergraduate students: Patrick Lachance, Andrew Roberts and Hannah Skobe.
"Graduate teaching assistants play an essential role in fulfilling the department's educational mission, whether they are in courses that primarily serve physics majors, in courses that primarily support physics education for students in other departments such as engineering or in gen eds serving a wide range of departments," said Rachel Mandelbaum, professor and interim head of the Department of Physics. "We are very grateful for the dedication of the three TAs we are honoring with TA awards for the 2023-2024 academic year!"
Patrick Lachance
Lachance serves as a teaching assistant for Physics II, where he primarily works with engineering and physics students.
"I enjoy being able to directly help students learn and understand concepts that are not intuitive to them," Lachance said. "Teaching recitations is particularly conducive to this, as they are generally relatively small classes, and encourage the students to work in small groups and ask many questions. I always find it extremely gratifying to be asked a question by a student who is struggling to understand a concept or complete a problem and helping them work their way toward understanding by providing small hints, or pieces of information or follow up questions that are tailored to their current level of understanding."
Outside of teaching, Lachance does research in astrophysics and cosmology. He uses computational methods to simulate galaxies and compare them with images from the James Webb Space Telescope. His work will help predict future surveys of galaxies.
Andrew Roberts
Roberts has been a teaching assistant for multiple courses in the department: Physics I for Engineers, Physics II for Engineers, Electronics I and Experimental Physics.
"Putting myself in my students' shoes and trying to imagine not knowing what I know so that I can adequately and helpfully explain something new to them is a challenging problem and something I really love solving." Roberts said. "I think the biggest delight for me is the look in a student's eyes when they finally understand something that was difficult to learn, or even better, when they share my joy in the physics we're discussing."
When he isn't teaching, Roberts is part of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a partnership based at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He builds modules that will be used to upgrade CERN's detection capabilities. He also aims to measure a difficult to observe and rare decay of the Z boson, a particle related to the weak force.
Hannah Skobe
Skobe works as a teaching assistant for the Experimental Physics Lab, an introductory lab primarily for physics majors.
"I enjoy the opportunity to show students that physics isn't an unapproachable subject but a way to understand the world," Skobe said. "I personally believe the hands-on nature of the course is such a helpful tool for truly understanding the principles of physics. Being able to interact with the students and see how they engage with the experiments, exploring the boundaries of the experiment, reminds me why I chose to pursue physics myself. I hope the students leave this course with a better appreciation for physics and the importance of experimental work."
Outside of the Experimental Physics Lab, Skobe studies the astrophysics of binary star systems with a focus on neutron stars. She works with Assistant Professors Katelyn Breivik and Antonella Palmese to both observe the properties of binary star systems and model how these systems form.
