About
After separate careers in the research and development industry (wrote AI software for medical diagnosis and preventive health) and computer graphics programming (founded my own company), I joined Advantage Learning Center several years ago. I currently work there alongside my wife, Lisa Moore, who is a full-time tutor with decades of teaching experience. We're both have Ph.D.'s from the University of Pennsylvania. During grad school and my previous careers I made heavy use of math and statistics. I'm now taking advantage of that background to tutor Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-calculus, Calculus, Probability, Statistics, Biostatistics, and math for test prep to high school, college, and graduate students.
A significant portion of my tutoring is focused on helping students struggling with online classes. These are increasingly common, especially as part of community colleges and graduate health programs. Students in these classes face high work-loads and having to master difficult, novel material quickly, while simultaneously being provided with little or no supportive teacher interaction. An important role I found I can play with my tutoring is to fill the gap.
II've found it rewarding to help nurses who were returning to school after having been away from math for many years to do well in their Statistics and Biostatistics classes, allowing them to graduate and advance their careers. Several times I've had the opportunity/challenge of working with students with dyscalculia and other learning disabilities. I enjoyed helping them figure out how to work around their disabilites, so they could still perform well on tests and finals.
Highlights
Reviews
Lynn D.
Cecelia
Frequently asked questions
What is your typical process for working with a new student?
Here are some questions I typically ask before the first session to help me prepare and better understand the student's needs: What’s the name of the class and what level of difficulty is it? What's the title, author, and year/edition of the textbook and which chapter/section(s) is the student currently working on? If the class makes extensive use of handouts, could you also pass those along? For high school students I like to ask both the parent and student what the student’s experience has been with the subject in previous classes. For the current class does the student have any issues with his or her teacher or textbook being unclear or difficult to understand? What is the student’s overall workload like, and is he or she mostly on top of work in other classes? For test prep tutoring, I'm also likely to start by having the student take a short diagnostic test.
What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
Math: As an undergrad at Brandeis University I took three semesters of calculus, plus other advanced math in the computer science department. I received an 800 on my SAT Math Level II, which tests knowledge of Algebra 2, Precalculus, and Trigonometry. I've also done extensive mathematically-oriented programming for my computer graphics company.
Statistics: I took courses in statistics and test and measurement theory as an undergrad at Brandeis University and continued with more statistics coursework as a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania. I branched into studying biostatistics to help me model probabilistic reasoning in medical diagnosis for my doctoral dissertation and learned additional biostatistics while working on medical software at the research and development company. More recently I've been using biostatistics to help me design preventive health apps for mobile devices.
Do you have a standard pricing system for your lessons? If so, please share the details here.
Generally, our prices range from $45-$70/hour, depending on the distance and the difficulty levels of the material. (more for AP, college or graduate level, adult learning, or emergency tutoring; some discount for two students taking the same lesson at the same time)
How did you get started teaching?
I taught several undergrad psychology courses as a grad student at UPenn, including guiding students in one-on-one research seminars, where the experience was closer to tutoring More recently I've had extensive discussion about and feedback on best practices for tutoring from my wife, who is a professional, full-time tutor with 20 years experience.
What types of students have you worked with?
I've worked with high school, college, and grad school students, ranging in age from midteens through older adults in their 50s. These included gifted, honors, college prep and to some extent special ed students. Several students who I tutored in the use of StatCrunch (web-based statical analysis tool) were not native English speakers.