Teaching
Current Courses:
EMCH 211 (Statics)
This course is the first of the engineering mechanics course sequence. In this course, students will learn to analyze both single and multiple body systems that are in static equilibrium. Students will learn to identify forces acting on these systems, draw free body diagrams of these systems, determine the equilibrium equations for these systems, and finally solve for unknown forces using these equations.
Course Syllabus
EMCH 212 (Dynamics)
This course follows statics in the engineering mechanics course sequence. In this course, students will learn to analyze the motion and the forces experienced by bodies in planar motion.
Course Syllabus
EMCH 213 (Strength of Materials)
This course follows statics in the engineering mechanics course sequence. In this course, students will learn about the internally distributed forces in rigid bodies under loading and the ways in which engineering material deform and/or break under loading.
Course Syllabus
ME 300 (Engineering Thermodynamics)
This course begins to explore the complex relationship between heat, temperature, pressure, and entropy in various materials and volumes. Students will learn to apply the laws of thermodynamics to determine unknown characteristics of various thermodynamic systems and will also use these laws to predict future states of the thermodynamic system. The course will end with an analysis of several “cycles” that are commonly used to heat, cool, or provide power in real world systems.
Course Syllabus
MATH 26 (Plane Trigonometry)
Trigonometry is the branch of mathematics concerned with angles and their applications. In this course students will learn about trigonometric identities and relationships as applied in two dimensional systems and will learn about the myriad applications of these relationships in real world systems.
Course Syllabus
ME 220 (Matrices)
Matrices is a course that teaches the core concepts and methods of matrix arithmetic: vector spaces, linear transforms, Gaussian elimination, dimension, eigenvectors, and orthogonality. It is a required course for many students majoring in engineering, science, or secondary education.
Course Syllabus
Past Courses:
EDSGN 100 (Introduction to Engineering Design)
This course is designed to serve as the introduction to a career in engineering, as well as the introduction to engineering the engineering program at Penn State. The course will cover a variety of topics including engineering design, modeling, analysis, and communication through a number of hands-on learning experiences.
Course Syllabus
HONOR 297 (Honors Seminar: Our Energy Future)
The goal of this course is to provide students the background they need to intelligently discuss the future of energy production, distribution, storage, and use in America and the world.
Course Syllabus
Teaching Philosophy:
Teaching is something I am truly passionate about, and it is what has drawn me to academia. As an engineering educator, my job is to help students develop into successful engineers. This is done by helping students develop an understanding of the scientific knowledge that underlies the natural and engineered world, by helping students develop a set of skills they can use in engineering practice, and by helping students develop a sense of identity as an engineer. I have learned a lot about the science of how people learn, and distilling all that knowledge into a single short document is challenging, but in the following section I do my best to identify the most critical things I have learned.
Education Can and Should Be Engineered
As a graduate of an engineering education program, I have learned to look at education as something to which I can apply my engineering skill set. Just as mechanical engineering builds upon physics and chemistry, education builds upon psychology; there is science behind both fields. The engineering design process1 shares many similarities with the instructional design process2. There are differences in the way data is collected and analyzed, but both engineers and educators collect data, analyze it, and apply the gained knowledge to design a better system. While acting as co-coordinator of the Engineering Exploration class, I have had the opportunity to put this into practice, using educational literature and data from previous years to justify my design choices in developing and modifying hands-on lab activities for the freshman classes.
Education Should Be Student Centered
If instruction is something that can be engineered, students are the input and output of the system. Education is not really about what is taught in class, but rather what the students learn in class. The true measure of the success in education is what the students can do after the class that they could not do before. In all of the classes I have taught, I have always taken the time to walk around and talk with students during problem-solving activities or group work, because I believe that being a good teacher involves at least as much listening as it does talking.
Students Need to Be Active Participants in the Learning Process
Learning is a process in which people construct knowledge based on the interactions they have with the people and environment around them3. Active learning pedagogies, such as Problem Based Learning4, where students are engaged in the learning process, have consistently been shown to be more effective at developing deep understanding than lectures, where students just passively receive the information. In design classes, such as the ones I have taught, active learning is standard. I believe in bringing active learning elements into all classes, though, making classes less like classes and more like engineering in practice by making students grapple with the information in a more realistic way through research, hypothesis formation, and experimentation.
Feedback Is Critical for Both Students and Educators
With student learning being the ultimate measure of successful instruction, measures of student learning are critical. This works in two ways: first, it has long been known that timely feedback is a key element in helping students make meaning of the world around them5. Feedback from an instructor in a course, both formal and informal, helps students understand evaluate the knowledge they are constructing. Systematic assessment is also essential for the cycle of continuous improvement needed for program accreditation6.
Effective Learning Requires Motivated Students
Finally, I believe that no student really learns anything well unless he or she is motivated to learn it. Students' beliefs about the usefulness of information, their beliefs about their potential for success in a class, and their beliefs about belongingness in the larger engineering community will all affect how students approach learning7. At one point as an undergraduate, I had a professor that began his class with an impassioned introduction to the work he did in his lab. Though it had little to do with introductory thermals and fluids, I found that his passion for his engineering sub-specialty was infectious. I emulate this practice now as one way to motivate students, beginning each class by introducing myself and talking briefly about the cool projects I am involved in in engineering. It does not capture everyone's interest, but at least a few freshmen each semester have waited around after class to talk about engineering with me, which I find a particularly rewarding moment as an educator.
References:
[1] Clive L. Dym and Patrick Little, Engineering Design: A Project Based Introduction, 3rd edn (Wiley, 2008).
[2] Walter Dick, Lou Carey and James O. Carey, The Systematic Design of Instruction, 7th edn (Pearson, 2008).
[3] John D. Bransford, Anne Brown and Rodney Cocking, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, Expanded (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000).
[4] Cindy Hmelo-Silver, 'Problem-Based Learning: What and How Do Students Learn?', Educational Psychology Review, 16 (2004), 235-266.
[5] Jeanne Ellis Ormrod, Human Learning, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall, 2008).
[6] ABET Inc., Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2012 - 2013 (Baltimore, MD, 2012).
[7] B. D. Jones, 'Motivating Students to Engage in Learning: The MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation', International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 21 (2009), 272-285.