I had multiple remarkable instructors who inspired me to pursue a career in education. They imparted knowledge, skills, and a passion for learning and being creative to me, and this career gives me the opportunity to regularly interact with students and pass these things along to them. Engineering education is also appealing because I get to instruct engineers at many different levels, from undergraduates to post-doctoral researchers. Students feel that I sincerely care about them and their successes. They appreciate educators who take the time to talk with them about class materials as well as other professional decisions. I teach mostly senior undergraduates, and so having an objective person to discuss career choices and career plans means a lot to many students. They also appreciate that I am hard working and very prepared. I try to keep them focused on the goal of obtaining their engineering degree. They need to have fun to maintain the focus. It is therefore important to work hard, but they must have balance during their studies.
Adapting to real-life problems
Engineers need to develop attention to detail for designing, implementing, and assessing systems. I think the best way to teach this is through examples. Students need to know that doing their best is good enough. It is also important to teach students to think about concepts and have them try to understand the fundamentals beyond equations, since many real-life engineering problems they will solve won’t necessarily be as well-defined and complete as typical classroom problems. If they can master fundamentals, they can apply these fundamentals to all aspects of the changing and challenging field of engineering. I structure my lectures on the engineering fundamentals and provide direct applications as examples, homework problems, and projects. I think employers do a good job of recognizing students that know how to think through problems using fundamentals.
How do you balance research and teaching
I believe these are closely related. Teaching a classroom requires educating students through accurate and detailed examples of the topic. A good researcher provides an accurate and detailed description of the research through publications and presentations, typically directed to the scientific community. I believe it is important to treat both of these descriptions as methods for educating. Creativity is also helpful in both of these arenas, as it sparks new research topics and it keeps students in lectures engaged and interested.
ASEE membership
ASEE provides excellent resources for teaching our engineering students in an easily accessible forum and I enjoy connecting to other engineering educators.
Outside of work
I enjoy spending my free time with my wife and two daughters. I also am a big fan of college football and college basketball.
I had multiple remarkable instructors who inspired me to pursue a career in education. They imparted knowledge, skills, and a passion for learning and being creative to me, and this career gives me the opportunity to regularly interact with students and pass these things along to them. Engineering education is also appealing because I get to instruct engineers at many different levels, from undergraduates to post-doctoral researchers. Students feel that I sincerely care about them and their successes. They appreciate educators who take the time to talk with them about class materials as well as other professional decisions. I teach mostly senior undergraduates, and so having an objective person to discuss career choices and career plans means a lot to many students. They also appreciate that I am hard working and very prepared. I try to keep them focused on the goal of obtaining their engineering degree. They need to have fun to maintain the focus. It is therefore important to work hard, but they must have balance during their studies.
Adapting to real-life problems
Engineers need to develop attention to detail for designing, implementing, and assessing systems. I think the best way to teach this is through examples. Students need to know that doing their best is good enough. It is also important to teach students to think about concepts and have them try to understand the fundamentals beyond equations, since many real-life engineering problems they will solve won’t necessarily be as well-defined and complete as typical classroom problems. If they can master fundamentals, they can apply these fundamentals to all aspects of the changing and challenging field of engineering. I structure my lectures on the engineering fundamentals and provide direct applications as examples, homework problems, and projects. I think employers do a good job of recognizing students that know how to think through problems using fundamentals.
How do you balance research and teaching
I believe these are closely related. Teaching a classroom requires educating students through accurate and detailed examples of the topic. A good researcher provides an accurate and detailed description of the research through publications and presentations, typically directed to the scientific community. I believe it is important to treat both of these descriptions as methods for educating. Creativity is also helpful in both of these arenas, as it sparks new research topics and it keeps students in lectures engaged and interested.
ASEE membership
ASEE provides excellent resources for teaching our engineering students in an easily accessible forum and I enjoy connecting to other engineering educators.
Outside of work
I enjoy spending my free time with my wife and two daughters. I also am a big fan of college football and college basketball.
