My adventure with Curt Hieggelke (and Tom O’Kuma) focused on two primary activities: introducing TWC and high school faculty, to interactive engagement, and developing materials to promote conceptual understanding. We started our journey when Curt and Tom took an AAPT workshop I presented at the 1990 winter meeting in Atlanta. At the following summer meeting in Minneapolis Curt asked me if I would be willing to be a co-presenter for similar workshops for a grant project he was submitting to NSF. I said yes little knowing that I was agreeing to a 25 year adventure. The series of workshops that Curt and Tom (and later Dwain Desbien) ran initially for TYC faculty, later to include high school instructors, was an extremely productive experience. That project subsequently morphed into developing curriculum materials to promote sense making for introductory physics. Curt was the critical element for all of these efforts

Curt Hieggelke was one of the largest contributors into making me the instructor I am today. His influence on me shaped my PER research goals, my career goals and my desire to make an impact in TYC Physics teaching. This talk will share my personal experiences with Curt, his influences on me and how he made me a better instructor and colleague.