Vikas Nataraja

Throughout my graduate career, I’ve taken on several teaching roles in various capacities. While there are many aspects that I love about teaching, connecting and interacting with students is my favorite. There are always questions they ask that force me to re-think how I can explain a concept in a different way. And that, I find, is particularly useful when writing a research paper or giving a talk.

I received a fellowship from the University of Colorado’s Center for Teaching and Learning in 2023 and I currently serve as my department’s Lead TA. As a part of this role, I regularly meet with other TAs in the department to check in on how their classes are going and what we are doing good (and bad) which I then use as feedback to the faculty and leadership to improve pedagogy and overall teaching experience.

Below are the classes that I have taught. For more details, feel free to contact me or view my CV.

ATOC 3050 – Principles of Weather – Spring 2024
  • I am currently teaching this class once a week for a class of 24 students who are a mix of atmospheric science, other STEM, and non-STEM majors
  • Example concepts that I am covering: reading a surface weather map, interpreting an upper-air atmospheric sounding, thermodynamics of fundamental atmospheric elements, etc.
ATOC 1060 – Our Changing Environment (Intro to Climate) – Fall 2023
  • Taught ~ 100 students from non-atmospheric science majors 4 times a week about the fundamental concepts climate change and large-scale climate phenomena
  • Example concepts covered: El Niño and La Niña, water and carbon cycle, Arctic and Antarctic sea/land ice, climate solutions, etc.
  • Closely worked with the main instructor Prof. Jen Kay to emphasize the importance of using data and the scientific method to understand climate change.
ATOC 3050 – Principles of Weather – Spring 2023
  • Taught ~ 50 students twice a week about the concepts of thermodynamics in weather analysis and other weather phenomena
  • Created all the teaching material from scratch while working with the main instructor, Dr. Mark Seefeldt (CIRES/NSIDC).
ATOC 4815/5815 – Scientific Programming, Data Analysis and Visualization Laboratory – Fall 2019

Main instructor: Prof. Sebastian Schmidt

ECEN 2703 – Discrete Mathematics – Fall 2019

Main instructor: Prof. Fabio Somenzi

ECEN 2310 – Programming with Mathematical Software – Spring 2019

Main instructor: Prof. Fabio Somenzi