Since plasma physics is a relatively under-resourced field, it is especially vital that we work with students to deliver information at a level that maximizes their understanding and growth. As a graduate student at Princeton, I led an effort to transform a seminar-style plasma physics course to better serve the student population by providing students more opportunity to practice and receive feedback on their presentation skills. This was met with much enthusiasm from the other graduate students, and prompted us to launch a broader effort to revitalize lecture-style classes at Princeton through better curriculum organization and engagement.

I further built on this experience as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia, where I initiated a student-led plasma seminar course to supplement the few plasma classes offered to graduate students at Columbia. After founding this course, I worked with the program administration to ensure that it could be carried on and led by the graduate students themselves in future years. It has now been active for five consecutive semesters and has become a staple of the Columbia curriculum, being one of the few places in which older and younger graduate students can interact weekly in an academic setting. In all of these efforts, the key to curriculum development has been close communication and collaboration with the student body to meet the students where instruction will be most beneficial.

I am also a member of the Small College Plasma Consortium, which is a coalition of faculty, students, and plasma researchers who care deeply about improving plasma education. The Small College Plasma Consortium provides a community of peers (both for faculty and for students) for members of the plasma science community who do not have the benefit of being surrounded by large numbers of fellow researchers and develops resources (both informational and physical) for members of this community through the pooling of many contributors. Together we are working on making plasma physics accessible to more and more people every year.