Aaron Patrick Titus (born 1971) is an American academic and professor with a doctorate in physics,best known for co-founding the online learning and homework service WebAssign. Currently a faculty member at North Carolina State University (NCSU),Titus previously worked at two other universities,and has won multiple teaching awards for his work in tertiary education.
Inspired by both his parents' professions,Titus had wanted to become a teacher since childhood,and developed a passion to teach physics after his first physics class in high school. He went on to earn his B.S. in physics from Penn State University in 1993,married his wife Kimberly Jo Titus (néeGossett) in 1994,and earn his Ph.D. in physics from NCSU in 1998. A year prior,Titus collaborated with North Park University professor Larry Martin to merge each of their respective online learning and homework services together to create WebAssign,which has since become one of the most widely used services of its kind. Since creating WebAssign,Titus has taught in some capacity since 1998:first teaching physics at North Carolina A&T State University until 2002,then at High Point University (HPU) until 2022,and has taught at NCSU since. As a professor,Titus has started multiple sponsored projects aimed at improving education in targeted areas. At HPU in particular,Titus played a key role in establishing the university's physics major and Department of Physics,serving as the new department's first chair. Titus also co-authored the 5th Edition of introductory calculus-based physics textbook Matter and Interactions,after contributing to the two preceding editions.
This work has earned Titus several academic awards,including the Meredith Clark Slane Distinguished Teaching Service Award in 2011:the highest teaching distinction at HPU,and the Excellence in Physics Education Award in 2019:shared with the eighteen-member Open Source Physics Team,from the American Physical Society.
Biography
Early life and education
Aaron Patrick Titus was born in 1971.[a] He was either born into,or later converted to,Pentecostalism,teaching Sunday school classes at a local Assemblies of God church later in life,[2] and expressing his gratefulness for faith on his "About Me" page for a university where he later worked.[3] With both of his parents employed as teachers,Titus recalls wanting to be a teacher since his childhood,and,after his first physics class in high school,wanting to specifically teach physics.[4] During his tertiary education,Titus earned a B.S. in physics from Penn State University in 1993,[4] and a Ph.D. in physics from North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 1998.[5][6] During the 1990s,as a first-year graduate student,Titus met his future wife Kimberly Jo Gossett,[1] a fifth-year graduate student,during a graduate student mixer,where they bonded over similar interests and beliefs.[7] On Valentine's Day in 1994,Titus proposed to Gossett through a letter,which initially led her to believe the answers to the questions it contained within would prepare her to receive her Ph.D.,when in reality,the answers spelled out "Will you mar²y me?".[7] In September 1994,Titus married Gossett,[1] with whom he later had two daughters named Melody and Michaela.[3]
In the past, when professors were hand-grading everything, that was the biggest time constraint. And by the time students got homework back, they might not even remember why they got an answer wrong.
— Aaron Titus,in an interview with AUTM, explaining one of his motivations for creating WebAssign.[8]
While studying for his Ph.D. at NCSU in the 1990s, Titus worked as a teaching assistant for physics professor John Risley (Ph.D.) who shared Titus' vision for incorporating technology into education.[8] In relation to this, Titus created an online learning and homework service named "PhysWeb" in 1996, which in addition to accepting and grading homework submissions, included animated demonstrations for solving problems.[5] The service, however, only worked with multiple choice questions.[8] In the summer of 1996,[4] Titus showcased the service at an American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) meeting,[8] during which, Titus spoke with a visiting professor from North Park University in Chicago, Illinois, named Larry Martin, who had created an online learning and homework service of his own named "WWWAssign".[4][5][9] Martin's service notably generated random numbers for homework questions, allowing students to work together on similar problems, but requiring them to calculate an answer with their own numbers to submit.[8] With both services offering features the other lacked, NCSU recruited Martin for a two-year sabbatical to work with Titus to create a combined service.[8] With the project supervised by Professor Risley, Titus' database structure and Martin's code were combined to co-create the first version of WebAssign in the autumn of 1997.[5] The combined service produced randomized numbers in questions, and allowed students to view upcoming due dates for homework, gain immediate feedback on answers, and access online tutorials for help with problems: features not previously possible through paper homework.[8] Despite only featuring about 1,000 questions total at the time of launch, a number of STEM professors at NCSU adopted the service.[8] Early feedback from professors who pioneered the service helped Titus and Martin find and fix software bugs, including allowing infinite submission attempts on questions without penalty.[8]
In 1998, WebAssign was made commercially available to use outside NCSU.[8] In 2002, an academic paper authored by Titus and fellow academic Guo-Qing Tang concluded that WebAssign increased interaction in the classroom. Additionally, the service was found to aid students in their completion of homework outside of the classroom, and instructors in their ability to create assignments based on student feedback.[10][11] The paper and its findings have been cited by multiple academic journals and universities: including the International Journal on Social and Education Sciences by Arizona State University student Derar Serhan,[10] the Electronic Journal of e-Learning by De La Salle University – Dasmariñas students Theresa Christine Valdez and Lea Maderal,[11] and Issues in Information Systems by California State University, Northridge student Christopher Jones.[12] The service continued to grow under NCSU until, in 2003, when copyright for much of the service's software code was transferred to its own company named Advanced Instructional Systems Inc., which was headed by Risley as CEO.[8] This launch as an independent company was credited with allowing the service to reach a wider audience.[8][9] By 2011, the service was used by 500,000 students across 1,500 institutions worldwide.[9] Institutes such as the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School have referred to the service as the "number one homework system used for calculus".[5]
Teaching and modern day
Logo of High Point University's Department of Physics: a department which Titus played a key role in creating while teaching there.
At the start of the 1998–99 school year, Titus began teaching as a visiting assistant professor of physics at the College of Arts and Sciences at North Carolina A&T State University;[13] and was promoted to an assistant professor during the following 1999–00 school year.[14] While teaching at North Carolina A&T, Titus co-wrote a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation which aimed to increase the number of students in STEM majors.[15] At the start of the 2002–03 school year, Titus began work as an assistant professor in physics at High Point University (HPU) in High Point, North Carolina,[16] where he was later joined by his wife.[7] Here, between at least 2005 and 2007, Titus set up interactive exhibits at multiple university-sponsored science fairs for local schools,[17][18] aiding Titus in to become a chairman on the Chemistry and Physical Science Department of the university by at least the 2006–07 school year.[19] During this time, Titus also won a competitive grant to create a project designed to provide innovative and engaging physics instruction through the use of animations, podcasts, and videos in class.[20]
Successful academic ventures in physics like these played a key role in helping Titus create both the physics major and Department of Physics at HPU, both of which did not exist before his arrival.[21] Likewise, after the creation of the Department of Physics, Titus served as its first chair,[21] and continued to serve in the position from at least February 2009[22] to November 2018.[23] In October 2008 for the 2009–10 school year, Titus was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor of physics and earned academic tenure.[24] In December 2009,[25] Titus co-created solutions for the 3rd Edition of the introductory calculus-based physics textbook Matter and Interactions.[5] In January 2013, Titus was elected to serve as the executive board member representing four-year colleges in the AAPT,[26] a position he held until his term expired in 2016.[21] From at least August 2015 to January 2017, Titus was one of two faculty mentors at HPU who oversaw the student-led construction of a rock-chip sampling device for the primary American space agency NASA.[27] In September 2020,[28] Titus further co-created solutions for the 4th Edition of Matter and Interactions.[5] At the start of the 2022–23 school year, Titus moved to NCSU to work as a physics professor for engineering physics.[29] In the same school year, Titus presented a training workshop to demonstrate how modern concepts such as machine learning and artificial intelligence can be used in STEM fields.[5] In May 2025, Titus co-authored the 5th Edition of Matter and Interactions.[5][30]
In the autumns of 2001 and 2011, Titus was awarded the "Best Pedagogical Paper" award by the AAPT.[31] In 2009, Titus received the "Evening Degree Program Outstanding Faculty Member" award from HPU.[31] In May 2011, Titus received the "Meredith Clark Slane Distinguished Teaching Service Award" from HPU in recognition of teaching excellence,[32][33] the highest award for distinguished teaching at the school.[5] In the winter of 2019, Titus received the "Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service" from the AAPT for exceptional contributions to the association.[21][23] In October 2019, Titus was one of eighteen members of the Open Source Physics Team which won the "2020 Excellence in Physics Education Award" from the American Physical Society for continued commitment to computational physics education.[5][34] In April 2025, Titus received the "Outstanding Teacher Award" from NCSU in recognition of teaching excellence at all levels, and as a recipient, also became a member of the "Academy of Outstanding Teachers" at the university.[35]
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