"Howdy! My name is Kay, and I’m excited to work with you! I have a Ph.D in Behavioral Neuroscience from Texas A&M University and during my doctoral program, I studied the circuits in the brain that underlie contextual fear memories (i.e- I wanted to find out why we learn that some places are scarier than other after bad things happen). I am passionate about learning, both as a topic and as a practice! I try to absorb as much new information from the world as I can. Learning new things makes life interesting for me.

I have five years of tutoring experience at the college level. I served for two years as an undergraduate TA for a microbiology lab course at UT Austin, during which I primarily taught students by using demonstrations of various wet-lab practices. I was present during the lab course so that I was available for students to ask questions. I also have two years of experience working at the UT Austin University Writing Center as an undergraduate writing consultant, during which I helped over 100 students with many aspects of the writing process, including brainstorming, organization, rhetoric, grammar, and proofreading. I employed a strategy that the UWC calls Non-directive and Non-evaluative; I never tell a student that their writing needs work or tell them what to do - instead, I prefer to ask questions about the motives of the student in making certain writing decisions and teach them ways to better reach their goals. My aim is to make your paper the best it can be, with as little of my voice as possible. I want my students to take ownership of their writing!

As a lab tech, and later graduate student, I taught students different lab techniques, including ways to operate specialized equipment and handle rodents. My primary methods of educating were demonstrations, diagrams, and visual representations of information, including schematics and illustrated flowcharts. I communicate scientific topics best in both a visual and auditory fashion to best reach students with different methods of learning." less...