I believe that teaching is trying new approaches and continuously revising processes to guide my students more effectively into new subject matter. Teaching is the constant reassessment, updating, and adjustment of both the content and presentation, searching for a more effective way to challenge my students to achieve their full potential and to develop their problem solving skills.
The Role of Teacher
It has been said, and I agree, that a teacher has three primary roles: tour guide, facilitator, and evaluator. I believe that each lecture, laboratory, or homework assignment should contain elements of all three functions.
As a tour guide, I will guide my students on an intellectual journey through their course of study. I will point out the scientific attractions, highlight important features of the subject matter, and focus attention on major terms or concepts and their significant relationships. In order to guide them properly on the intellectual journey, I must have a great understanding of the subject matter being taught and stay current in a field. I will improve subject matter knowledge by engaging in research and participating in conferences and workshops.
As a facilitator, I will design a framework and provide a set of tools so that my students can use them to achieve their full potential and gain the knowledge they seek. These tools must be diverse enough to accommodate a variety of students with different personalities and learning styles. For this reason, I believe that employing a variety of teaching styles and techniques is critical for teachers. Traditional lectures have been a staple of classroom teaching and offered a great value, but they are not necessarily the most effective way for all students to learn the subject matter. Active learning is an alternative approach to teaching that can be as simple as mixing a lecture with questions thrown out to the class or class exercises. I advocate the active learning style because its effectiveness in helping students to learn materials has been demonstrated. I am also in favor of using a cooperative learning style, in which students are assigned to small groups and they work as team. Not only do the weaker students benefit from the bright students in team assignments, but the bright students also more thoroughly understand the material through explaining it to others. I also believe that using technology in teaching is a very important tool. Besides the importance of exposing students to the latest advances in science, I believe that technology can help to make complicated concepts more accessible and facilitate understanding. The use of the World Wide Web (Internet) has created great opportunities for more effective distance learning. Course websites, discussion groups, and Internet bulletin boards can enhance not only distance learning courses but they also can enrich students’ classroom experiences.
As an evaluator, I will set high standards of achievement and evaluate the progress of my students against those standards. In the course of their education, I expect my students to develop an ability to think independently, creatively, analytically, and critically. Additionally, I expect them to learn how to write and speak effectively, and organize their thoughts and reasoning logically. I believe that tests should challenge the students to evaluate how much deep they understand the subject material. Examinations should also test how students analyze problems and think critically to come up with solutions.
Teaching through Research
At the graduate level, the research experience is the most critical component of the educational experience. Through research, students can learn how to formulate interesting scientific problems and propose innovative solutions with logical thought processes. Hence, research is a very important aspect of teaching in universities; they are inextricably connected. I will guide my graduate students on an intellectual journey through their course of graduate study. I will provide a facility where they can learn fundamental skills necessary for doing quality research. I will also set and maintain high standards, and help students meet and exceed those high standards.
I also believe that undergraduate research plays an important role in enriching undergraduate education. I was fortunate to have a wonderful experience working as an undergraduate researcher for three years, which played a major role in my decision to pursue a graduate education. I believe that a quality undergraduate research project helps the student in following four areas. First, it provides the student the opportunity to get significant exposure and learn in depth about a new subject area. Second, the project reinforces engineering fundamentals (i.e. transport phenomena, thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, etc.). Third, it teaches them how to apply those fundamentals for solving important practical problems. Lastly, the undergraduate research project introduces the student to basic research skills. Additionally, a quality undergraduate research experience not only greatly enriches undergraduate education, but it also serves as a launching pad into research for the next generation of graduate students.
Design a fuel cell course
I would like to design and teach a fuel cell course. Its class objective is to train chemical engineers prepared for the tomorrow’s workforce in the emerging sustainable energy technology field. This fuel cell class would offer both classroom lectures and experimental sections for fuel cell systems with a special emphasis on their portable power applications. Through this course, I envision providing an opportunity for students to design, assemble and test a portable fuel cell and to enter a national competition. In classroom lectures, I will teach students the fundamentals of fuel cell systems and materials aspect of fuel cell technology. In experimental sections, students will have the opportunity to develop hands-on experience in operating the fuel cell and optimizing fuel cell system using a simulation tool such as FEMLAB.
Continual improvement
I believe in continually striving to improve in the area of teaching by attending teaching workshops and seminars. If more effective new teaching techniques and methodologies become available, I will incorporate them effectively into my teaching.