My first faculty position was as Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College, PA. In addition to pursing Astronomy research, I taught undergraduate courses and supervised some undergraduate students pursuing independent study. This teaching led to my interest in exploring the teaching of science concepts. I was invited to teach as Visiting Assistant Professor at Wellesley College, and was later offered a tenure track appointment at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York, where many of my students were pre-service teachers. Ensuring that these individuals clearly understood Science concepts became a great interest. The experience led to my curiosity about some of the basic misconceptions which potential future educators had about subjects which they, themselves, would be teaching in Science.

I am currently pursuing this passion in my own classes, as an educator of teachers, in my distance learning, where I aim to provide a model for how technology can be integrated into the classroom, and in my collaborations with colleagues at Tufts University, where I have co-founded ESTEEMS (Ecosystem for Science Teaching, Engineering Education, and Mathematics Scholastics), a network of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and general Education faculty interested in developing cross-disciplinary strategies for more effectively training the future STEM workforce and future teachers.

Currently, I am Associate Research Professor at Tufts University, where I teach Liberal Arts students, Science majors, and in-service teachers – the latter which is through the Fulcrum Institute of Science Education at Tufts. I am now seeking further opportunities to guide the education of teachers, to train STEM students in Pedagogy, and to organize workshops for college faculty on alternate teaching methods.

http://cosmos.phy.tufts.edu/~zirbel/