For many researchers, the final semester of a PhD is a sprint to the finish line. For Dr Parker LaMascus at the University of Pennsylvania, it was also a step into the classroom. Under the guidance of Professor Robert Carpick, Parker had spent years exploring tribology at the nanoscale. But alongside his research, he took on the role of teaching assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate tribology course, co-taught by Professor Carpick and Dr Martin Webster.

That meant delivering a guest lecture on elastohydrodynamic lubrication, running three condensed lab sessions, and helping to update and grade homework and exams. With graduate students and senior undergraduates in the same room, and only 90 minutes to work with, the real challenge was translating complex technical ideas and making them resonate. It’s a skill Parker will be putting to use now as he begins his role with PCS Instruments as a part-time Technical Writer.

We sat down with Parker to hear how he approached the task, what worked in practice, and how he hopes to carry that motivation forward.

1. Last spring you recently assisted with a Tribology course. What was your role?

During my last semester in my PhD lab at The University of Pennsylvania, I was a teaching assistant for Tribology, a course co-taught by my advisor, Prof. Robert W. Carpick, and Dr. Martin Webster. The audience for the course was graduate students and senior-level undergraduates. As a teaching assistant, I gave a guest lecture (on elastohydrodynamic [EHD] lubrication), led three lab sessions, and helped to update and grade homeworks and exams.

• How did you approach leading these lab sessions, given that diverse audience of mixed graduate and undergraduate students?

The primary challenge of these labs was a time constraint – at Penn, most lab components would have a dedicated course credit given to them, but I had to fit three labs into one 90-minute lecture period each. With that much time, there’s no way I could train one person on, e.g., PCS’s MTM instrument, let alone a class of 20. I therefore tried to focus on the essentials, a crash-course in how each instrument worked, when the students might find it useful in their studies or careers, and how to interpret its data.

• What was the biggest challenge in translating technical experience into the classroom?

It’s so daunting to cover a topic as broad as “Tribology” with just one semester! Luckily, Drs. Carpick and Webster laid all of that groundwork with their course design, but I got a little taste of the challenge with the EHD guest-lecture I gave. There are many PhD theses that only study one or two tiny aspects of EHD lubrication. Given 90 minutes to summarize all that depth, which parts of that should I cover in graduate-level detail, versus a coarse survey, versus a footnote? And so on.

• Can you share an example of adapting a complex concept for students, and what made it effective?

I learn best when I get to connect new information to my firsthand experience or prior knowledge, so I tried to replicate that for the students. In my EHD lecture, for example, I asked them to remind me about the conditions that enable regular old hydrodynamic lubrication, which they’d used on their most recent homework. And then I introduced elastohydrodynamics by just relaxing one or two of the conditions they’d just given me, so that the students could intuit that EHD wasn’t a new (and therefore intimidating) topic, but rather a small tweak on a topic they’d already mastered.

• When you contributed to exams and homework for the course, what was your approach?

I got to design maybe 1 or 2 questions per assignment set during the course. The first challenge is to distill the scientific content into discrete, gradable allocations of points. To keep using my EHD example, which aspects of that huge topic are most critical for a student to learn? Those ought to be the biggest sources of points. And as a corollary, I don’t want any points to be missed due to misunderstandings of my prompts, so afterwards it’s important to user-proof the assignment – it’s as if I’m doing UX on product design or something.

• What did you take away from this teaching experience, and has it influenced your own research or communication style?

Mostly I took away a sense of satisfaction. It’s really rewarding to see a student’s eyes light up when they suddenly understand something about the complex, real-world, discipline of tribology. Some students asked the teaching staff which lubricants they should use in their senior design project, or told us about the tribology aspects of their recent skincare-product internship. I want to bring that educational motivation with me as I move forward.

Final Takeaways

Parker’s perspective highlights how teaching can sharpen more than knowledge, it can shape the way complex science is shared and understood. His reflections point to an approach that values clarity, connection, and the practical links between tribology and everyday experience. It is a reminder that the field moves forward not only through research, but also through the people who make it accessible.

To hear more about Parker’s journey and his perspective on tribology, you can also catch his episode of TribologyTalks here:

🎧 Listen here

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