"I have been teaching at Anne Arundel Community College, Community College of Baltimore County and Howard Community College since August 2019.

I hold two B.S. degrees in Biology and Biochemistry from UMBC, as well as a M.S. in Chemistry, also from UMBC. I am a nontraditional student and a lifelong resident of Baltimore City. I graduated from high school in 1997 and initially enrolled at UMBC, where I spent three semesters double majoring and minoring. Unfortunately, I burned myself out and ultimately took a ten-year hiatus from higher education, during which I worked various retail and manufacturing jobs.

Despite stepping away from school, I never lost my passion for learning. Since the age of ten, I had wanted to study biochemistry. In 2008, that interest was reignited when my sister—who had previously failed biology—asked me to tutor her. With my help, she earned an A, and through that experience I realized how much I truly missed science and teaching.

The following semester, I enrolled at CCBC and took a single calculus-based physics course, earning a B. Over the next three years, I continued taking two courses per semester while working full time. Eventually, I returned to UMBC. A 2.6 GPA is not terrible, it was not competitive for graduate school. While working full time and paying off my mortgage, I spent the next five years steadily improving my academic record, ultimately raising my GPA to 3.3 and earning my two bachelor’s degrees.

In 2016, I entered the Chemistry PhD program at UMBC. However, in 2019, I made the decision to leave the program with a master’s degree because my long-term goal was to teach at the community college level. I graduated the day before my 40th birthday.

Throughout my undergraduate studies, I worked in after-school programs teaching chemistry to elementary and middle school students. I have also taught organic chemistry to high school students through the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program." less...