Meet Instructor Aaron Johnson
Aaron Johnson is a new instructor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.
He comes to CU Boulder from the University of Michigan, where he completed post-doctoral research in the Engineering Education Research Program and served as a lecturer in their Department of Aerospace Engineering. Prior to Michigan, Johnson also completed post-doctoral work at the Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach. For the past five years, Johnson’s research has focused on engineering education. His current research focuses on ways to make the sophomore- and junior-level engineering science courses reflect real-world engineering practice, such as by teaching productive beginnings of engineering judgment through open-ended mathematical modeling problems.
Johnson’s engineering education research directly informs his teaching and allows him to continually improve the ways he engages students with the material. At Michigan he taught Introduction to Solid Mechanics and Aerospace Structures, and he was twice awarded the Silver Shaft Award for Undergraduate Teaching from the Sigma Gamma Tau Aerospace Honor Society. At CU Boulder he looks forward to teaching both the sophomore- and junior-level structures courses. If you have him in class this year, he hopes that you’ll ask him about his favorite aerospace-related song.
Johnson earned his PhD in Humans in Aerospace from MIT, where he studied how operators respond to the dynamic re-allocation of tasks during flight. In addition, he holds an MS in Aerospace Engineering, also from MIT, and a BSE in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan. Johnson’s hobbies include biking, hiking, writing, collecting NASA-themed LEGO sets, and making pancakes with his daughter.