Industry Experienced Ph.D. Candidate Science and Math Tutor

Brandon Y.

I have been a tutor, mentor, and collegiate supplemental instructor since the spring semester of 2015. It all started at Illinois College where I began as a psychology and mathematics tutor for Psych 101 and Math 123 (Statistics). I later tutored courses such as behavioral genetics, intro to neuroscience, and the calculus series. Once graduated, I moved to DePaul University for my Master's and instructed general chemistry and organic chemistry labs. Now, I am currently a year off my Ph.D. at University of Southern California in Physical Chemistry. Here, I also instructed general chemistry labs and led discussion sections and private tutoring for the Thermodynamics and Kinetics course. These experiences varied from one-on-one tutoring sessions, to discussion sessions of groups of 10 or more students, to laboratory instruction settings. Since these were mostly collegiate teaching experiences, I've tutored mostly 17-23 year olds.

My method of teaching is based in the approach of acknowledging the student where their current understanding and frustrations with the material lie. Most often, I see that students have a tendency to either stress so much about the impact of their performance that they hurt their ability to study or they underestimate their own ability to study in the first place. I take a very humanitarian approach that reassures the student that they are capable and show them step by step examples where I instruct how to approach the hard materials. This helps the student not only learn the material, but also learn a method of approach for tests, and it boosts their confidence. I've had great successes with this method throughout the years. Most often my students complain that their professors or instructors seem to "not understand where they are coming from" or "don't know how to teach to someone who knows nothing". I aim to bridge that gap with the understanding and compassion of someone who was in their position before.