Department of Physics and Astronomy

Faculty: Kathy Shan

Teaching and research interests

Dr. Kathy Shan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. She holds a B.S. in Physics from Marshall University, an M.S. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction both from The University of Toledo. She joined The University of Toledo faculty in 2004 and achieved rank of Senior Lecturer in 2021. 

Dr. Shan has a deep understanding of teaching and pedagogy in addition to the disciplinary content she teaches. She creates an interactive learning environment and provides opportunities for her students to work together and reinforce the knowledge they acquire. Her teaching philosophy states that a good teacher does “more than just present their knowledge to students” and “is willing to meet the students where they are, in terms of preparation and life situation.”

She receives consistently high teaching evaluations in all her courses, which consist of challenging calculus-based physics courses. Dr. Shan's ongoing efforts have been recognized with multiple Provost "Shout Outs", as well as being awarded the Provost’s Shining Star (March 2014) Award, Outstanding Teacher (2022) Award and being recognized as a Distinguished University Lecturer (2023).

Dr. Shan does research in physics and astronomy education, studying the best practices to improve student learning in large enrollment science courses, as well as curriculum development for major and non-major courses.

She has presented her research into education at the 2014 APS and 2016, 2018-2020, and 2022-2023 American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) conferences. Her presentations have included quantitative comparison of active applets versus passive multiple choice and classroom demonstrations versus not.