Teaching Overview
My Philosophy
My favorite question to hear from a student is: “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” That’s because in Industrial Engineering, there is always a fun and unique answer to that question. My passion is to take the complex and difficult concepts of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering and present them in a way that is relatable, straightforward, and founded in real life problems. My belief is that engineering students should not be terrified walking into an engineering classroom, wondering if they will be able to “compete” with other students. Instead, my goal is to create a collaborative environment where students can learn concepts as a team and succeed together.
My Experience
My current teaching experience stems from multiple teaching assistantships at Northwestern University. I assisted in teaching undergraduate courses in beginning optimization modeling (IEMS 313) and capstone senior design (IEMS 391). My duties comprised of teaching laboratory sessions, tutoring sessions, weekly review sessions, and numerous in-class lectures. Some of my favorite experiences during my PhD studies involve helping teach these courses. I won “IEMS Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year” two years in a row from my students.
In addition, I am passionate about encouraging young girls to pursue careers in engineering. At Northwestern, I serve annually as the Industrial Engineering instructor in two Society of Women Engineers (SWE) events, aimed at exposing middle school and high school girls to each engineering discipline through laboratory lectures and activities. Teaching lectures at these events has special meaning to me because I would not be where I am today without such programming. I intend to remain involved in such programming in the years to come.
Student Feedback
"Ashley pretty much helped keep me from a failing grade. She worked very hard to help explain how to solve problems in a far clearer manner as well as simply showing how to solve certain problems. This made solving problems on assignments a little bit easier because we actually had somewhere to draw insight from."
"Ashley was AMAZING, by far and away the best TA I've ever had! So friendly and approachable and she was really good at clarifying the material."
