Contact Information:
e-mail:
phone: (217) 244-6730
fax: (217) 333-5052
206 Roger Adams Lab
MC-712, Box C-3
600 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
The role of an effective instructor is that of a facilitator of learning and skill development. Instructors often develop pedagogical goals that reflect desired outcomes such as students’ ability to effectively deconstruct and analyze engineering systems as well as successfully communicate and justify their designs, conclusions, and analyses. The challenge in realizing these outcomes often involves having the appropriate background to develop relevant course content, present material in the correct context, and use the most effective teaching approaches to communicate with students.
My current pedagogical interests include the holistic design of senior unit operations courses to include and effectively integrate technical communication, troubleshooting, safety, economic analysis, equipment scale-up/design, and chemical plant case study analysis with traditional process theory and experimentation. Capstone engineering laboratories present themselves as unique instructional contexts for the incorporation of these important hands-on, real-world topics. Through Potential Problem Analysis (PPA), in-class and in-lab troubleshooting assignments, equipment optimization, plant/process research, and written and oral reports, students have responded with pragmatic appreciation for chemical engineering and the variety of pedagogical approaches used.
Likewise, capstone senior design is a course well poised to examine a blend of relevant engineering topics. Team-building, communication, ethics, professionalism, and chemical product development are taught within a framework of unit operation design, plant safety, green process engineering, profitability optimization, and simulation. An optimized balance of these topics help students leave the undergraduate academic environment well prepared for the expectations of industry and graduate school. Discovery of the appropriate balance of these subjects applied with the most effective teaching approaches can dramatically improve students’ level of learning, intellectual development, and knowledge retention.
Ultimately alumni, industry, and academia assess the effort made to facilitate students’ engineering training. My foci include not only developing innovative course design, but also actively interfacing with students, alumni, industry recruiters/representatives, and graduate schools for assessment of these approaches. This helps realize the ultimate, encompassing goal of preparing graduates to be competitive with the best engineers in the world.
