Dr. Laura L. Griffith Garland

Tutor

Dr. Laura L. Griffith Garland started tutoring when she was 8 years old.  At that time, her 2nd grade teacher asked her to help several students who had been out with the flu with their reading and math skills.  She’s been helping students ever since.  All the way up through elementary to high school, she helped fellow students succeed.  During college, she earned money tutoring local high school students and her fellow college students.  During graduate school, she realized that to be a good professor she needed to know the principles of good teaching and learning, so she earned her Master’s of Arts in Teaching while completing her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences.

With all of the course-work she has had to complete for various degrees and programs, Dr. Griffith Garland has the equivalent of the following Bachelor’s degrees: aerospace engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, and nuclear physics.  She also has the equivalent of a minor in biology.  Her actual degrees are a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics (summa cum laude), a Master’s of Arts in Teaching (Mathematics and Sciences), and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Dr. Griffith Garland has been a lab instructor, a lecture instructor, the chair of mathematics and sciences for middle and high school, and a Master Training Specialist, teaching nuclear physics and advanced mathematics for the United States Navy.  One might ask why Dr. Griffith Garland prefers to tutor.  She finds that she has more flexibility in helping students understand the material when she tutors.  As she also works as a life coach and author of fiction and science textbooks, she appreciates the flexibility that tutoring allows.