Steve Yang ’08, a former teaching assistant at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will return to his alma mater to join the science department as a Physics teacher this year.

After graduating from Harvard-Westlake, Yang went on to earn a Bachelor of Science from USC and a Master of Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in structural engineering.

As a teaching assistant, one of his responsibilities at Rensselaer was to make YouTube videos for students who needed help with homework.

He also led exam review sessions, helped run and organize student labs, worked with professors to write and design new lab experiments and taught students about engineering software.

He was awarded the Rensselaer School of Engineering Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in 2015, and the year after, he was a Search Finalist in the Khan Academy Talent Search.

Yang said that he is both excited and nervous for the year ahead.

“I’m just hoping that my students do well and that the class doesn’t crash and burn on me,” Yang said. “It’s my first year teaching so I need to make sure that I’m keeping track of everything and making sure that I maintain the historic averages of the school.”