teaching | Ricky Parada

Head TA; Section Leader (SL)

Head TA, SL at Code in Place (Spring 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024)

Part of the Code in Place teaching team for all four offerings to date, a project that launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 10,000 global students and 900 volunteer teachers participating from around the world. Prepared and taught a weekly section based on material from Stanford’s introductory programming course, CS106A. Gave weekly feedback on student assignment submissions, led workshops and training sessions for new SLs (2021). Hired, onboarded, and held office hours for SLs as Head TA (2024).

Website available here.

Course Assistant: Design and Analysis of Algorithms

CS 161 Course Assistant, Stanford University (Spring 2023, Fall 2023)

Course staff for an upper level core CS class with 650+ students (Spring 2023) and 150+ students (Fall 2023). Course covers asymptotic analysis, recurrence relations, efficient sorting, binary search trees, heaps, hash tables, dynamic programming, greedy algorithms, randomization, minimum-cost spanning trees, connected components, topological sort, and shortest paths. Organized weekly sections, prepared problem sets/exams, held office hours, monitored Q&A forums, graded problem sets/exams, and hosted review sessions to help students prepare for exams. Further worked with Embedded Ethics fellows to integrate ethical considerations in algorithm design content (Fall 2023).

Course website (Spring 2023) available here. Student evaluations available upon request.

Stanford Quantum Computing Association (SQCA), Stanford University (September 2021 - June 2024)

Organized speaker series/events at the intersection of Quantum Computing (QC) and social good. Collaborated with other organizations and develop initiatives that improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within QC. Taught quantum computing fundamentals to those interested in the field with little to no experience.

Section Leader: Programming Abstractions

CS 106B Section Leader, Stanford University (Winter/Spring/Fall 2022, Winter 2023)

Course staff for the second programming course in C++. Content covers data abstraction, Object-oriented programming, fundamental data structures (stacks, queues, sets), data-directed design, recursion, recursive data structures (linked lists, trees, graphs), and an introduction to time and space complexity analysis. Taught weekly sections to 10-15 students, graded assignments/exams, and helped students debug during office hours.

Course website (Fall 2022) available here.

Section Leader: Programming Methodology

CS 106A Section Leader, Stanford University (Fall 2021)

Course staff for the introduction to programming class in Python. Course covers program design, decomposition, encapsulation, abstraction, and testing. Taught weekly sections to 10-15 students, graded assignments/exams, and helped students debug during office hours. Further mentored incoming section leaders as a small group lead (SGL) and led exam grading sessions.

Course website (Fall 2021) available here.

Resident Assistant

Resident Assistant, Stanford University (September 2021 - June 2023)

Managed 88 all frosh (2021-22) and upper class (2022-23) undergrads, budgeted dorm funds as house treasurer (2022-23), and planned kickass events to Yosemite, Disneyland, etc. Taught Frosh 101, an introductory course focused on easing the 1st year transition to life at Stanford (Fall 2021).

Kids Coding Mentor

Breakout Mentors (January 2020 - June 2021)

Mentored middle/high school students in creating interactive projects using Java, Arduino, Unity, Python, and more. Projects ranged from implementing popular games such as Connect Four, Snake, and Pacman (with ghost agents embedded with basic AI logic) to wiring and programming a self-navigating Arduino Robot.