David W.
Private tutor in Seattle, WA
Education
Chemistry major, magna cum laude, at Amherst College. My thesis concerned the synthesis of self-assembling, helical organic nanotubes. Chemistry Ph.D. at Harvard University, specializing in biochemistry and structural biology. My thesis concerned a protein complex in Gram negative bacteria that is responsible for folding and inserting membrane proteins into the bacterial outer membrane.
Experience
I've tutored students at nearly all grade levels and I played an active role as a teaching fellow at Harvard University. My tutoring experience is in middle school and high school math, as well as biology and chemistry at all levels. At Harvard, I gained extensive experience teaching students in introductory biology, introductory chemistry, organic chemistry, and chemical biology. I was awarded two Certificates of Distinction in Teaching from the Bok Center at Harvard during my time as a teacher. Past students have described me as “efficient, effective, [and] fun,” “an absolute pleasure,” and “a phenomenal teacher […] a natural.” One student wrote, “I'm so glad I had him as my Section Leader. He was super enthusiastic about the topic, so that generated more enthusiasm among us (the students). He was really helpful when we asked him questions during lab or during office hours. Also, David brought other applications of the topic (and some tangential subjects) we were learning about during the section, so it's good to see that he had more outside knowledge of how something could be used.” Perhaps as indicated by some of these student comments, teaching energizes me.
Subject Expertise
Physical ScienceAP Biology9th Grade math12th Grade math11th Grade math10th Grade mathTest PrepMicrobiologyMolecular GeneticsOrganic ChemistryAP Calculus ABPre-AlgebraPre-CalculusPSAT MathematicsQuantitative ReasoningSAT MathSAT MathematicsSAT Subject Test in Biology E/MSAT Subject Test in ChemistryGRE QuantitativeLife SciencesIntermediate AlgebraIntermediate AlgebraIB Chemistry SLIB Chemistry HLIB BIology SLIB BIology HLHonors ChemistryGRE Subject Test in ChemistryGRE Subject Test in BiologyGREGeneticsGeneral ChemistryGeneral BiologyChemistryCell BiologyBiologyBiochemistryAP Chemistry
Availability
Weekdays in the morning, Weekdays in the afternoon, Weekdays in the evening
Can Meet
Up to 15 minutes away for no additional charge, Up to 1 hour away at my regular hourly rate
Hobbies
I grew up in the PNW and after studying on the east coast for close to a decade, I'm happy to be back. I'm an outgoing and somewhat goofy fellow who believes that a teacher's role is to connect the often dry material that is taught in classes to interesting real-world examples. Only by being interested in the material can one expect to invest time and energy into learning it, and my role as an educator is to inspire that interest, that curiosity. Personally, I'm into chess, the board game go, painting, photography, amateur economics, and politics.
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