My teaching interests and philosophy have been heavily influenced by the faculty members I have worked with or have attended lectures of, throughout my time at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Along the way, I have picked up effective teaching techniques from each one of them which has prepared me to develop a style of my own. I am an instructor for the course CE 214: Engineering Mechanics-Statics at NCSU. I have been teaching this course for the past two semesters. Presently, this class has 49 students and is one of three sections for CE 214. Although the curriculum remains the same in all of the three sections, I independently develop homework, quizzes, and exams for my class. My role also involves serving office hours, coordinating the instructional workflow with my teaching assistant, organizing the class website, and performing administrative requirements for the class. I use quarterly surveys to gauge the effectiveness of my assignments and adjust accordingly to provide students with skills to solve a wide range of problems.
My experience of teaching CE 214 for two semesters has led me to believe that a large number of students find it challenging to make a smooth transition from high school to college. Hence, my philosophy for teaching fundamental subjects such as statics, mechanics of solids, reinforced concrete, and structural steel is as follows. I like to teach the fundamentals by relating every new concept to something the students are already familiar with. Just like climbing up a staircase, I proceed one step at a time because it is easy to lose collective attention if I start jumping up too early. I have found that it is easier for students to make difficult leaps up the stairs of learning when they possess the skill of relating concepts to one another. As chapters progress, I like to continuously refer back to concepts they have learned in earlier chapters to facilitate understanding of newer ones.
Engineering courses require critical thinking and problem-solving skills. In addition to solving problems during lecture hours, I provide my students with pre-recorded tutorial videos that emphasize on trickier problems and their solutions. I like to create a class environment conducive for students to ask questions by pausing, and also encouraging them to interrupt me at any point. In my experience, appreciating good questions, answering them, posing a related question, and answering the second one as well have seemingly increased class participation.
In addition to coursework, I like to encourage interested undergraduate students to perform independent research. Depending on their interest, these will be studies that would add value to the field, such as development of software to solve specific problems or hands-on contribution to projects explored by my graduate students. This approach enhances their understanding of the subject and adds content to their professional portfolio.
For graduate-level courses, I like to employ a different approach. The students at this level will have chosen this field of study of their own volition and hence will be intrigued to know more. Building up from concepts that they already know is still an effective strategy. However, graduate students need to be challenged more because they are the ones who often find themselves at the forefront of research in any field. Their aptitude for critically thinking about unsolved problems have to be cultured in the classroom. In my advanced course offerings, while lectures will still be the primary source of information dissemination, some of the knowledge required to complete assignments will have to come from external sources. Rather than limiting their experience by solving textbook problems, I am interested in pushing graduate students to solve open-ended problems that are either research or practice-oriented.
My approach will be to incorporate state-of-the-art research within the coursework. For example, in a course pertaining to earthquake engineering, a conclusive answer to a question of which ground motions are to be used for design verification, is still under much debate and is an open area of research. However, recent concepts such as the Conditional Mean Spectrum (CMS) may open up viable paths. As a separate example, in performance-based structural design, engineering demand parameters such as inter-storey drift have been conventionally used as a limit-state for non-structural damage. Recent parameters such as the Expected Annual Loss (EAL) may lead to building designs with better control on non-structural damage. In short, I will incorporate the latest concepts in my curriculum to provide the students with a sense of where research is headed.
As a doctoral student, I have received ample opportunities to mentor students. I was a mentor to two students at different points of time as part of the RISE program for undergraduate research. The mentoring was nominally for three months during summers in which the students assisted me in performing experiments and analyzing test data. These experiments directly contributed to my dissertation. From one-on-one conversations with them, I learned about their expectations of a mentor. These conversations allowed me to adjust my approach to make both their and my time worthwhile. The following is an anecdote to illustrate what I mean. Initially, I used to repeat myself when instructing the first of my mentees on some research methods. I had assumed that this would reinforce the student’s learning. However, I soon realized that the student was a fast learner and that repetitive instructions were superfluous to the whole process. Consequently, I changed my approach appropriately. As a mentor, I am now confident that I will be able to tailor my approach in the most efficient manner suitable to the mentee.
My role as a mentor was overseen by Dr. Mervyn Kowalsky. He was also the faculty advisor for my mentees. I have received meaningful feedback from him during our meetings which has helped me immensely in improving my approach.
At NCSU, I was selected into a cohort for a one-year training program called “Preparing the Professoriate”, organized by the Graduate School. This program is designed for aspirants of pursuing an academic career. The program coordinators organized multiple workshops that aided my development as a faculty candidate. I received training in different aspects of being an academic faculty such as teaching, mentoring, classroom management, and serving roles of ancillary nature when required by the department. This program also provided me with a unique opportunity of observing and being mentored by an established faculty member in the planning and execution of an undergraduate course. I was mentored by Dr. Rudi Seracino. This opportunity has exposed me to thinking critically about learning objectives, and how these align with the department’s vision and with the standards required by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). In addition to lecturing, being involved with administrative aspects of teaching, while serving as an instructor, has helped me develop professionally as a university-level educator.
In summary, my teaching and mentoring experiences have included the following:
- acting as a substitute lecturer in the absence of the instructor in classes as large as 120 students;
- acting as course instructor for classes of up to 50 students;
- organizing and developing seminars, workshops, and demonstrations;
- coordinating material procurement and preparation;
- developing assignments, problem sets, quizzes, and tests;
- grading and evaluating student work;
- hosting office hours and review sessions; and
- engaging in the administrative aspects of university level teaching.
Topics that I am comfortable to teach are: Engineering Mechanics - Statics and Dynamics, Solid Mechanics, Structural Analysis - Classical and Matrix methods, Reinforced Concrete Design, Structural Steel Design, Finite Element Methods, Structural Dynamics, Earthquake Engineering, Non-linear Analysis and Design of Structures, and Probabilistic Methods in Structural Engineering. In addition, new courses that I am interested to develop are Performance-Based Seismic Design of Structures and Statistical Learning in Earthquake Engineering. These courses would contain basic and advanced concepts of structural demand and capacity under earthquakes, viewed through the lens of probability theory. Important objectives will be to prepare students to carry out displacement-based design and assessment of structures, perform seismic risk assessment and retrofitting, and apply statistical techniques to make inference regarding structural reliability.
I believe that knowledge is invaluable because it allows people to progress by achieving goals they would not have achieved otherwise. Therefore, passing it on comes with big responsibilities, but not without the pleasure of giving something back to the society.