Mentorship,
in the room.

"Learning about your background before teaching this course made us respect and awe you even more. Keep teaching and inspiring students like us around the world."

"The explanations are always really clear and I really appreciate the fact that you addressed everyone's confusions as you explain. I really just enjoyed learning the basic concepts of topology in general."

"Being empathetic while correcting us, asking if we were following along, making it interactive. Material was challenging, a nice change of pace from being treated like middle schoolers in other seminars, but something I looked forward to attend. The people in that group, the questions, and your support made it a memorable and inspiring experience."

"Some of the analogies were extremely useful, and I think the knowledge checks really helped to catch misunderstandings I had. I also really liked the beginning clarification of processes and purposes as it helped make understanding a lot smoother."

"I found the graphs and depictions along with a walkthrough of what each part of the graph meant most helpful. My favorite activity was when we went around the table sharing our answers to the number of holes in a shape."

"I thought the gifs on the slideshow made the concepts discussed much clearer. I also thought that drawing the torus on the board was helpful for my understanding."

"What worked well was the explanations you gave when referring to TDA. I enjoyed when we discussed possible uses of TDA as a group."

"I liked the discussion styles and being able to solve a fake situation as it allowed for us to understand many different aspects."

"Enjoyed the group discussions and different ethical cases we did. I liked the discussions and the case studies because they made me think about what I was learning."

"Those ice-breakers were amazing and overall the atmosphere during the seminar was super friendly and 'learning'."

"The small group discussion and seminar as a whole group exposed me to different ideas that I benefited from a lot. The explanations and slides are also very clear."

"There was a lot of hands-on mathematics in today's seminar, like solving the trivial knots and computing Kauffman brackets. I enjoyed the hands-on stuff since I find it easiest to learn something when I do the math behind it."

"I enjoyed doing things on the board because the seminar feels interactive this way. I enjoyed solving for the Kauffman bracket and I liked the visual aids."

"I liked that there was a lot of content and we weren't just talking about the same concept. It was really helpful, especially in math I think, to do problems together with you on the board. I also loved that you introduced the topic before talking about your research and the research process."

"I particularly enjoyed deriving the methods ourselves as it made the seminar more engaging and enabled first-hand experience in the field."

"I liked how there were a lot of graphical representations to complement the theoretical maths. It is really interactive and we get to do some graph drawing and try things ourselves."

"You always thought about the practicality of the topic and not just kept it to the theoretical part. This made me understand the seminar much more because I did not have much experience in the field. You asking questions and making us reflect on the topic was also great."

"I liked how technical it was while being relatively easy to understand. It was all explained very well. I liked the final activity where we could apply what we just learned to "real life" scenarios we had heard about."

"I enjoyed the breaks to ask questions. It kept me engaged and thinking critically. I also appreciate how you created a safe space by encouraging all questions."

"The questions instead of giving us straight answers helped me better understand the topics at hand."

"You checked in a lot and took the time to explain things. You did not assume students had certain knowledge."

"I liked that you seemed extremely knowledgeable about your topic. I enjoyed when you let us all solve the one knot problem on our own."

"I enjoyed working at problems even though I struggled to understand. I have never worked with pure math like this so it was interesting."

"Thank you so much for introducing this complex topic and making it so accessible and easy to understand."