University of Maryland, Baltimore County

From 2011 to 2015, I was a faculty member of the Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. My primary responsibilities as lecturer were course instruction and academic advising. I also began and continued projects in engineering education research.

In the fall of 2011, I was co-instructor for ENCH 215 and 437L, our material and energy balance course and unit operations lab, respectively. In the spring of 2012, I taught all sections of ENCH 225, Chemical Engineering Problem Solving and Experimental Design, and co-taught in our senior capstone course. And that's just the start! For the following academic years, I have added a few more courses to my arsenal, while working more toward improving the overall undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum.

ENES 101/101H/101Y: Introductory Engineering Science

This is where it all begins! Prior to coming to UMBC, most of my teaching experience came from teaching the two-semester first-year engineering sequence at the University of Notre Dame, where I have worked in both the lecture and learning center (or discussion) sections, including redesign of projects from the ground up. I first taught UMBC's one-semester introductory course in the fall of 2012. I brought my experience with introducing project-based learning and MATLAB instruction to UMBC in a way it has never seen, with more transparency in course outcomes and learning objectives. While exploring the same topics traditionally covered in past semesters, I hope I motivated our first-year engineers to be more proficient with both modern computer tools and technical writing, by redistributing the old course agenda into two smaller projects with heavier use of mathematical modeling and computer programming throughout the semester.

ENCH 215: Chemical Engineering Analysis

I have to start by saying that I am really happy to return to the book that started my chemical engineering journey for me: Felder and Rousseau's Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes. It's a book I see many of our juniors and seniors still carry around, and for good reason - it's a really convenient reference for a lot of different information. In this course, we discuss applications of the material through chapter 9 - virtually the same as when I took my material and energy balance course years ago.

In fall of 2011, I largely conducted the discussion/recitation sections for the course on Friday afternoons. We worked through material adapted from our colleagues at NC State and work through as many example problems and applications as the two hours will allow! I also helped to "tag team teach" during the regular lecture, usually emphasizing computational strategies when they are applicable, or helping to explain concepts in other ways when we seemed to be at an impasse.

Starting in the summer of 2013, I offer this course in the summer track. This is an especially helpful opportunity for transfer students, UMBC students who entered the program with significant credit in math and science, or students taking the course as a second attempt. The course is as close to the fall version as possible - which includes meeting for the equivalent of three hours of lecture and two of discussion every "week."

ENCH 225: Chemical Engineering Problem Solving and Experimental Design

I always look forward to our sole required course for sophomores in their spring semester, which focuses both on problem solving using computer tools and experimental design. In this course, we work through a number of statistical and numerical analyses all with the aim to work with data and pose and solve engineering problems. In the spring of 2012, the course was expanded to include an additional hour of face-time to further work on skills in programming, numerical methods, and engineering ethics. I have also developed an official course packet for ENCH 225, providing a free resource for our students. Starting in 2013, this course is officially Writing Intensive - and as a result, students who take ENCH 225 in 2013 or later are no longer required to take ENGL 393, Technical Writing.

Starting in the fall of 2013, this course is offered both fall and spring to help transfer students as they continue in the program. ENCH 225 is now also officially a prerequisite for ENCH 442 and our senior labs, which is a testament to how critical this course has become, under the development of the five faculty members who have taught the course!

ENCH 425: Transport Processes I - Fluid Mechanics

Fall 2013 brought about the unexpected opportunity to run the first in the sequence of our transport courses. This was a great opportunity to collaborate with the instructor for thermodynamics to emphasize the connections between the two courses. I brought my personality and expertise in the course by following up on the MATLAB skills our students learn in 225 to work on some numerical partial differential equations, on top of the usual macro- and microscopic considerations of conservation of mass, energy and momentum. And typical to a fluids class, we made sure everyone could pass as plumbers, sizing pumps and analyzing systems of pipes.

ENCH 437L: Chemical Engineering Laboratory

For this course in Fall 2011, I retrofitted an old piece of laboratory equipment for a two-week experiment in process control. Using LabVIEW software, students collect data on the dynamics of a heat exchanger as one of the fluid flow rates is varied. They are given a week to take that data and evaluate it using process control heuristics, with the aim of having a set of PID controls to test out in the second week of the laboratory. In this week, students use a second LabVIEW program to automate PID control on the system, and further adjust their control parameters in real time to find an acceptable control scheme for a small range of desired output temperatures of the process fluid.

I am committed to clear technical writing, and this is one of the best courses in our curriculum to really work with our engineers as they develop and fine-tune their ability to write clearly and effectively. This course provides several opportunities for our engineers to write and revise technical documents.

ENCH 442: Chemical Process Control and Safety

In the spring of 2013 and earlier, this course was called "Chemical Engineering Systems Analysis," whatever that meant. With the recent new charge from ABET to include chemical reaction hazards analysis in all undergraduate curricula, and an opportunity to build on student experiences in ENCH 225, I am thrilled to get to teach process control and especially safety for our department in the Spring of 2013 and beyond. The course has been redesigned to more fully integrate with the other required junior-level courses in our program, and this means significant changes - more frequent, but shorter, meeting times, more mathematical modeling (but no more Laplace transforms!), and more hands-on projects and laboratory opportunities to provide more connections between theory and practice. With the name change comes a serious focus on chemical process safety.

ENCH 446: Process Engineering Economics and Design II

My role in this spring-semester chemical engineering course was to further help students fine-tune their communication abilities in both writing and speaking. I was also responsible for monitoring group formation and dynamics. This course was taught by a small team of chemical engineering faculty in the spring of 2012 in order to give our engineers ample resources in this capstone course. The team-teaching style was implemented again in 2014 as a unified effort among the entire department.

ENCH 470/654: Chemical and Environmental Modeling

In fall of 2012, our department offered for the first time an advanced elective on mathematical modeling, especially as it pertains to environmental systems, climate change, population biology, and chemical process safety. My aim with this course is to provide our engineers more experience using computer tools such as MATLAB to numerically investigate systems where often modeling is the only option, and to develop user-friendly tools to help investigate such systems. Our students create some really cool GUIs as their semester project, and everyone learns another thing or two about MATLAB!

ENCH 642: Chemical Engineering Systems Analysis

In the spring of 2015, I was finally equipped to run a graduate-level, project-based process control course. In this course, students developed their own physical and/or computer-based prototypes exploring process control. Student had hands-on experience exploring concepts related to multiple input, multiple output processes, model predictive control, whatever control theory drove their interest! This course gave me experience with the concept of Specifications Grading, where agreements are made in advance as to what earns each letter grade in the class. I am immensely grateful for the willingness and capability of the seven students who took this class with me.