Embedded Files
STEAM STUDIO: STUDENT WORKER
STEAM STUDIO: STUDENT WORKER
As a SkillSet Instructional Assistant and Student Supervisor at UNCA's STEAM Studio, I mentor students, particularly female-identified and gender-expansive individuals, by fostering confidence and technical skills in science and technology. I design and lead hands-on workshops, guiding students through projects that integrate electronics, fabrication, and creative problem-solving. In the studio, I collaborate with students, faculty, and community members to bring ambitious ideas to life, utilizing advanced tools like CNC machines, laser cutters, and welding equipment. Beyond instruction, I ensure a safe and well-maintained shop environment, helping students navigate both the artistic and functional aspects of their designs.
Studio Space Overhead Photos
Studio Space Overhead Photos
Wood Shop
Metal Shop
Flex-Space
In addition to supporting the daily operation of the studio, I also design and teach curriculum centered on the iterative design process through physical game development. Students move through repeated cycles of design, prototyping, playtesting, evaluation, and implementation while developing their own variations of a central game concept, often based on an “Ultimate Cornhole” framework. Using rapid prototyping materials such as cardboard, participants construct and modify game elements while performing structured playtests to evaluate how their designs perform.
Iterative Game Design Loop
During these playtests, students collect simple experimental data through binary testing and observational metrics, for example, whether a structure fails or remains stable, whether gameplay rules are intuitive or confusing, and whether design changes improve performance. The curriculum also introduces principles of accessibility and adaptive game design, encouraging students to consider factors such as fine and gross motor skills and inclusive gameplay. Through this process, students learn to analyze feedback, iterate on their designs, and approach problem-solving with an engineering mindset grounded in experimentation, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
Collective Idea Mapping (Session One)
Guided Discussion (Session Four)
UNCA Engineering Design Lab: Technician
UNCA Engineering Design Lab: Technician
As a Lab Technician in the Engineering 3D Print Lab at UNC Asheville, I support students and faculty in transforming engineering designs into functional prototypes through advanced additive manufacturing. I maintain and operate a fleet of professional-grade printers, including systems from Bambu Lab, Ultimaker, and Markforged, ensuring reliable performance through calibration, preventative maintenance, and material management. I assist students in preparing CAD models for fabrication, helping them troubleshoot slicing settings, print orientation, and material selection to achieve successful prints. Beyond day-to-day operation, I contribute to the development and organization of the lab infrastructure, creating workflows and documentation that improve accessibility and efficiency for engineering design projects.
FDM Design, Maintenance, and Troubleshooting Documentation Samples
FDM Design, Maintenance, and Troubleshooting Documentation Samples
The goal of this presentation on Design for FDM 3D Printing is to introduce foundational additive manufacturing concepts and help students understand how design decisions influence print success, strength, and manufacturability. By breaking down the FDM process, from filament extrusion to layer-by-layer fabrication, the presentation helps students visualize how digital models become physical parts. Emphasizing design constraints such as directional strength, overhang limitations, build volume, and material selection encourages students to think critically about how their CAD models interact with real manufacturing systems. Through this guided introduction to design-for-manufacturing principles, the presentation aims to build confidence in newer lab users and enable them to create more reliable, efficient, and functional 3D printed components for their engineering projects.
Repair Ticket and Maintenance Spreadshet
Troubleshooting Guide
Design Projects
Design Projects
I designed and built a shadow box and storage container for the Voltera V-One PCB printing kit to keep all of its components organized and easy to access in the lab. The structure includes a two-layer shelf with a drawer: the lower drawer holds a foam insert with cutouts for tools like the drill attachment, probe, tweezers, and conductive ink dispenser, while the upper shelf stores PCB substrates, rivets, and other small materials. I also added side compartments to hold the sacrificial drilling layer and the PCB drill bits. The goal was to keep all of the V-One components in one place so they’re protected, easy to find, and quick to set up when someone needs to prototype a circuit board.
Assembled Two-Layer PCB Consumable Storage Container
Foam Tool Holder
Custom foam shadowing insert designed to securely hold the Voltera V-One tools, including the drill attachment, probe, tweezers, and conductive ink dispenser. The cutouts keep each tool protected, visible, and easy to return to its designated location.
Two-Layer Storage Assembly
Complete Voltera V-One storage system featuring a two-layer layout with a drawer for foam-shadowed tools and an upper shelf for substrates, rivets, and accessories. Additional side compartments store the sacrificial drilling layer and drill bits, keeping all PCB prototyping components organized in one place.
Substrate & Rivet Holder
Dedicated storage module for PCB substrates and copper rivets used during fabrication. The holder keeps small consumables organized and easy to access while preparing and assembling printed circuit boards.
Joint NCSU-UNCA: Teacher's Assistant
Joint NCSU-UNCA: Teacher's Assistant
As a teaching assistant for both Embedded Systems and the Introduction to Mechatronics Laboratory, I mentored students through the full process of designing, programming, and testing embedded robotic systems. I spent extensive time helping students debug individual codebases and troubleshoot hardware–software integration while reinforcing structured problem-solving methods such as flowcharts, pseudocode, and modular design. In addition to technical mentorship, I delivered lectures, hosted exam reviews, and designed the course’s final robotics competition project to help students translate engineering concepts into working systems.
As a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Embedded Systems Class, I worked closely with students as they designed, programmed, and tested a complete embedded robotic system built around the Texas Instruments MSP430FR2355 microcontroller. A central part of my role involved guiding students through the full engineering development process, from early system planning and program structure to hardware integration and final verification. I spent extensive one-on-one time helping students debug their individual code, identify logic errors, resolve timing and interrupt conflicts, and troubleshoot issues arising from hardware–software interaction. Much of this work required methodically stepping through each student's program and circuit implementation, helping them isolate faults and understand the underlying engineering principles behind the system behavior.
Beyond laboratory troubleshooting, I also supported students in developing the confidence and technical understanding necessary to navigate complex embedded systems problems independently. I hosted review sessions covering major course concepts such as interrupt-driven programming, sensor integration, motor control, and structured software design. These sessions focused on reinforcing core principles while walking through practical debugging strategies that students could apply to their own systems. As a result, many students reported feeling significantly more prepared for examinations and were able to exceed their own expectations in both laboratory performance and written assessments.
In addition to technical mentorship, I guided students through the process of documenting their work in a comprehensive engineering report exceeding 70 pages. Students produced formal system documentation that included subsystem descriptions, hardware schematics, software flowcharts, verification procedures, and test results. Through this process, I helped them translate complex technical work into clear and structured documentation comparable to professional engineering design reports, reinforcing both the analytical and communicative aspects of engineering practice.
In the Introduction to Mechatronics Laboratory, I took an active instructional role in both course delivery and curriculum development. As the senior teacher's assistant, I led a team which designed the semester’s final term project, a robotics competition that challenges student teams to design and build a remotely operated robot capable of navigating a constrained circular arena while performing object manipulation, sorting, and placement tasks. The project required teams to collect colored balls distributed throughout the field and deposit them into multiple receptacles with varying heights and geometric constraints, forcing students to consider tradeoffs in drivetrain design, end-effector mechanisms, and control strategies. The event structure incorporated strict design requirements which encouraged students to make thoughtful engineering decisions while working within realistic system limitations.
The competition environment was intentionally designed to expose students to multiple engineering challenges simultaneously, and additional bonus tasks introduced obstacles such as elevated objects and constrained access points, requiring creative mechanical solutions and strategic planning. The scoring structure rewarded both task completion and strategic prioritization, prompting teams to balance reliability, speed, and complexity in their designs.
Alongside the project design, I delivered lectures introducing foundational program-planning methods such as flowcharts, pseudocode, and structured problem decomposition. These tools helped students translate high-level design concepts into executable control logic for their robots. Throughout the semester, I mentored teams through the iterative engineering process of design, prototyping, testing, and refinement, guiding students as they debugged hardware and software systems and improved their designs through successive development cycles.
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