College professors these days face an ever-higher bar to grab the attention of their students, forced to compete with the stimuli of smartphones and laptops in large lecture halls. But when your professor is a social media star, it's a little bit easier.
Tatiana Erukhimova, who teaches physics at Texas A&M University, has managed to get her students, as well as future generations, excited about the science. Known as "Dr. Tatiana" to her students and online fan base, the professor performs physics tricks with boundless energy and enthusiasm. Videos of her theatrical demonstrations have racked up hundreds of millions of views across TikTok and other social media platforms.
In the kid-friendly videos, Erukhimova uses a range of everyday objects in her experiments, from pingpong balls and toilet paper to marshmallows, bicycle wheels and hair dryers. She credits the university marketing team's videos of her lessons for her social media success. "This is just one of our ways to connect with people to make physics accessible to people," she tells NPR. As part of the physics department's extensive outreach program, she also puts on shows almost every week teaching physics to K-12 students. "The sooner kids are taught physics and taught it well, the better," she says.
It's clear she knows what it takes to get young people excited about a hard science. But it wasn't always that way. When she first started teaching college freshman classes almost two decades ago, she says she struggled to grab the attention of her younger students. She was used to teaching juniors, as she had for a few years prior to that. But when it comes to teaching a large lecture hall of 100-plus first-year students, first impressions are make or break.
"I did not grab their attention on the first day — that was my mistake," she says. "I missed this opportunity to bond with them from the very beginning, and then it took me a while to find my voice."
By the second semester, she found her footing, tweaking her approach to make her lecture halls feel smaller, and get her students engaged. The key, she says, has been to make herself approachable and her instruction personal.
