Teaching & Mentorship

Teaching & Mentorship Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy involves two primary facets: 1) the alignment of content (lectures and homework), assessment, and pedagogy to target specific learning outcomes and 2) driving student engagement (motivation). To illustrate an early undergraduate thermodynamics class, one outcome may be to have students be able to reduce a complex problem through application of first principles and supported simplifying assumptions. Lectures on 1st and 2nd laws could then emphasize examples that require thoughtful deduction of appropriate assumptions (selecting appropriate equations of states, identifying terms that are negligible). A homework assignment may then make use of a different case, perhaps more complex and drawn from real life (non-contrived) examples than can be achieved in the short time of in class lectures or exams, that would require a student to make an argument of the validity of their assumptions based on the underlying approximations that drive them. A quiz or exam question would then test their understanding of valid assumption selections by naturally requiring the student to implement assumptions to get to a calculatable answer. In each of these cases, the examples, quiz, and homework, questions are not copies of each other, but examples that can illustrate the diversity of problems engineers will face in work and daily life, applicable irrespective of their path forward to industry or further education.

Graphical summary of teaching philosophy.

Mentorship Philosophy

A professor should be able to mobilize students to a higher level of thought and adaptability not only in accomplishing their thesis work, but in ability to attend the many scientific and engineering problems facing the world today. A professor/staff scientist to student relationship is parallel to that of a guild (master to apprentice), the primary outcome of the program to master their area (thesis work) and, above all, be able to carry that process of building scientific and engineering mastery into other areas and projects. As such, the emphasis for graduate students is placed on learning what routes are available to navigate a project, its broader impact, and possible directions of research. As a key responsibility of a professor is to bring student to a highly adept scientific level, my philosophy targets training students to analyze literature and the scientific landscape to unite the many approaches and methods available to lead to discovery and innovation. Students graduating under my mentorship will have skills needed to provide unique solutions to the world’s most pressing questions and problems facing industry, academia, and defense.