Name: Julia Kregenow ’01
Position: Graduate School Instructor (GSI), Astronomy Department
Location: University of California, Berkeley
Major : Physics

The advice graduating senior Julia Kregenow included with her placement picture on the Career Center’s Wall of Fame was simply “Look Up.”

Like many Wittenberg students, Julia decided to go to graduate school right away, but any similarities she shared with fellow graduates probably stop here. After all, this track-runner, jazz-saxophone player, NASA fellowship recipient now attends UC Berkeley, where she is pursuing her Ph.D. in astronomy.

Julia’s teaching responsibilities began immediately as a GSI in the astronomy department. During her first year alone, she taught a discussion session one hour per week for the introductory astronomy class, held office hours, wrote and graded quizzes, and led review sessions and other class activities, including regular telescope observing sessions or “star parties.”

She discovered early on that most students, including herself, need more than the traditional lecture setting to learn, which is why she incorporates humor and props into her classes, which regularly feature demonstrations and activities. She also believes that Wittenberg students are just as smart as students at Berkeley, and she has come to realize that math and science anxiety is everywhere. In addition, she has also learned that she doesn’t know anything until she teaches it.

Regardless of astronomy preparation, teaching solidifies the basics and forces the teacher to learn how to communicate with a less technical audience, Julia explains.

Her four years working in the Math Workshop at Wittenberg were invaluable preparation for her as a teacher. She credits Pam Riesner, director of the Math Workshop, for helping her to learn the methods and hone her teaching skills, which she now incorporates in her daily work at Berkeley. Berkeley needs a Math Workshop, Julia says, and universities in general need more people like Pam Reisner teaching.

She also credits physics professors Elizabeth George, Paul Voytas and Daniel Fleisch. “Their clear, organized, accessible presentation of this complex subject in and out of class ensnared me early as did their obvious love for science,” Julia says.

Because Julia’s department requires its graduate students to teach during their first year, Julie was forced to apply her skills immediately. After the first year, a select few then have the opportunity to teach upper-level undergraduate courses for astronomy and physics majors. Despite the intense competition, “a few of us can’t resist the challenge, and so we teach on,” Julia says. “We love to share our own excitement about what we do.”

Now in her second year at Berkeley, Julia continues to teach at the introductory level but in a slightly different capacity. The extremely popular “intro astro” survey class, one of the largest classes at Berkeley with an enrollment of 800 or more, requires a small army of GSIs (about 12), and this year Julia will be head GSI.

As she describes it, the head GSI is the mechanic who greases the wheels and attends to every crisis to make it all go. Also, as she did last year, she helps run an evening learning/homework help session, similar to the drop-in evening tutoring conducted by several departments at Wittenberg.

“ Teaching for the same class again will allow me to implement the many lessons I learned — mostly from mistakes — when I taught for the first time. After this year, I hope to start teaching the more advanced undergraduate classes, which will hold a whole new set of teaching challenges.”

As head GSI, Julia also hopes to help dispel the illusion that science and math are reserved for the elite. She believes a teacher who can demystify a subject creates an environment where students can really open up to learning. It’s a model that she learned from Dan Fleisch at Wittenberg.

“ Dan taught me what I wanted to do with physics through patient guidance and by example. He helped me find and break into my field — astronomy, and he is exactly the teacher and scientist I hope to be. I invoke Dan every time I step in front of a class. His humor, compassion, insight, and creativity sustained me then as a mentor and now as a best friend.”