Honestly though, when I went through college, the very last thing they tried to shove down my throat wasn't advanced data structures but instead Design Patterns

Design Patterns might not be what he's looking for. Design Patterns (in my experience) tend to map well to OO concepts and/or are described in OO concepts, kernel programming, however, does not fit well with the OO concept. I think he might be better of sticking to advanced data structures and algorithms rather than patterns if he wants to apply it to kernel programming.