Abstract: During this presentation, I provide information about my background and teaching philosophy and present my current and future research goals. I have been an educator at Oregon State University for 35 years; 22 years in the Physics Department. I have come to understand the way I was taught does not have to be the way I teach. I emphasize interdisciplinary problem-solving combining science and the humanities. I'm an evidence-based teacher and use stories, examples, and analogies to integrate concepts and draw connections. I find stories are retained more than simple facts and data, and stories help communicate in another person's language of understanding and learning. Stories allow me to become the "activator" for student discovery and allow me to tell the story of how we know what we know and why that is important. I want students to understand new information and discoveries transform our thinking and deconstruct underlying false premises and bias. As a scientist, educator, artist, and performer I try to set a positive example of this learning style for my students. My previous research work was in astrogeology related to the identification of terrestrial impact craters. My future research goals involve continuing the search for terrestrial impact structures and to investigate learning outcomes of OSU Honors College students.

Bio: Dr. Randall L. Milstein is a faculty member in the Oregon State University Physics Department, and the OSU Honors College and has taught at OSU for thirty-five years. He is the recipient of the OSU College of Science Distinguished Service Award for his outreach engagements, and in 2022, named the Sanders Eminent Professor of the OSU Honors College. From 2016-2022 he was Astronomer-in-Residence to the Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium (OSGC) and currently represents OSU as its Affiliate Representative to the OSGC.

Dr. Milstein is also a NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar System Ambassador. Before coming to OSU Dr. Milstein was a petroleum geologist/geophysicist with the Michigan Geological Survey specializing in subsurface stratigraphic correlation. Dr. Milstein's research interests include astrogeology, impact-cratering dynamics, and archaeoastronomy. Before his career in astronomy and geophyisics, Dr. Milstein was educated and trained as a photographer.