Zachary

Certified Tutor

I earned a B.S. in chemistry and mathematics (double major) with honors in the liberal arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016. After graduation, I worked for three years at Alcami Corporation, a pharmaceutical company, as a process chemist, working on the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) on a multigram to kilogram scale. In 2019, I started graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, where I am currently a fourth-year graduate student working on the development of new synthetic methodologies. While a PhD student at UT Austin, I have had the privilege of serving as a teaching assistant (TA) for one semester of general chemistry II lecture, four semesters of organic chemistry laboratory, and four semesters of organic chemistry II lecture. Over these nine semesters, I am proud to have earned an average TA ratingbased on student evaluationsof 4.86 out of 5.00.

Unfortunately, it seems most students have had a negative experience with their organic chemistry lecture courses. Traditional approaches to teaching organic chemistry involve rote memorization of reactions, reagents, and mechanisms. I think this is both an antiquated and ineffective way of teaching organic chemistry; instead, I believe the more effective way to teach this subject is to focus on how to think about organic chemistry. Organic chemistry provides "tools" that can be leveraged to predict reactivity or the general characteristics of organic molecules. It is also important to recognize that a lot of the chemical transformations proceed by very similar pathways (i.e., "same song, different verse"). If you can learn to use these basic tools and recognize patterns, then you do not need to worry about memorizing anything! This is the exact approach that I try to use while teaching studentsapplying basic concepts/tools to more complicated systems and realizing that it truly is just a different verse of the same song.