Biography

Colin West is a postdoc in the physics department at UC Santa Cruz with a focus on active learning techniques and physics in a "flipped classroom." He is particularly interested in developing practices which support the success of students from URM groups, and in pedagogical interventions involving undergraduate learning assistants ("LAs"). Colin received his PhD from the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University, where he also trained in science communication with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and participated extensively in New York's CSTEP program for minority students in STEM. He holds bachelor's degrees in Engineering Physics and Applied Math from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where the LA program originated and where he was himself an LA for several years.