At the University of Oklahoma, I taught the second laboratory course in the standard EE lab sequence. This course introduces the student to both analog and digital circuits. While at Cornell, in addition to my research, I taught several classes in numerical methods at several levels. In the Spring of 1995, I taught an introductory graduate level class in Numerical Methods for Electrical Engineers. This class covered the numerical simulation of both ordinary and partial differential equations on a variety of topics including power systems, orbital dynamics, soliton propagation in fiber optics, electrical patterns in the heart, as well as kinetic plasmas. I also worked as a teaching assistant for several years both for this course and for a senior level class on modeling of electrical circuits.

Philosophy of Teaching
My philosophy of teaching states that the main role of the teacher is to guide the student in their learning. In addition to knowledge, the teacher also needs to transmit an enthusiasm for the subject. There does not exist enough time during the course of the semester to teach the students everything they should know, so the teacher must be able to teach the students how to learn. In order to accomplish this goal, the teacher must also convey a motivation for the students to desire to continue to learn.

Some means for accomplishing these goals include the use of transparent thinking to model the scientific process. Approaching a problem from different perspectives enables the teacher to reach a wider range of students since the students will all have different styles of learning. Provoking student interest in a subject also requires motivating active participation from the students, using real life examples and non-mathematical analogies, as well as constantly asking value questions about the importance of the material being covered. Whenever possible, the course should incorporate projects requiring the student to model the design process that is an inherent part of engineering practice.

Inspiring student motivation to continue to learn is more difficult than simply conveying the relevant facts, but it can be among the most rewarding aspects of teaching. Doing so requires the teacher to not only be well-informed about the subject material but also to be well-prepared and above all have an enthusiasm for the subject.

EE 423 - Computer Methods for Circuit Simulation
This senior level course was designed to introduce electrical engineering students to numerical methods using the topic of circuit simulation as a motivation. The students in the course learned how to solve linear and nonlinear systems of algebraic equations as well as ordinary differential equations. Unlike most standard numerical methods courses that present the material in a non-specific manner, in this course, the numerical techniques were all geared to solving circuit simulation problems. The students learned not only the numerical methods, but they also learned how to apply them to a topic about which they already possessed a good understanding. The course emphasized application and understanding; in order to succeed, the student had to have a good comprehension of both general circuit analysis as well as the behavior of individual circuits in order to write and debug their computer codes.

The course was structured so that the students began with a skeleton code to introduce them to the basic aspects of the "C" programming language as well as to ensure that all students started at the same level. During my tenure as a teaching assistant, the computer paradigm changed several times in a search to provide a structure that enabled the students to focus on the relevant aspects of the numerical methods without getting bogged down in the overhead of other aspects of writing computer code. This search included using "C++" twice. The first time, all of the class structure was written for the students and they just had to incorporate it into their code. The second time, they wrote the class definitions as well as the numerical method aspects of the codes. Both approaches proved to be unsatisfactory. In the first case, the students did not fully comprehend what they were doing, they were just going through the motions. In the second case, the students bogged down in the class definitions, which was not the focus of this class. The final incarnation, that seemed to work the best was to incorporate the object-oriented philosophy of "C++", but restrict the language to plain "C".

EE 524 - Differential Equation Numerical Methods for Electrical Engineers
The basic idea of this graduate level course was to expose the students to the power of using computer simulations to advance scientific research. The course presented five different topics on recent advancements in the field of Electrical Engineering. The projects were chosen not only for their topicality, but also because each presented a different type of differential equation to be solved.

The course began with solving a system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to deal with the problem of faults in an electrical power grid. The course then examined the similar (albeit not exactly standard electrical engineering) problem of the chaotic nature of the three-body problem in orbital dynamics. The next stage of the course investigated solving the parabolic partial differential equation associated with soliton propagation in optical fibers. The next topic introduced mixed parabolic/elliptic PDE's dealing with the propagation of electrical patterns around the heart, specifically on how to generate rotor waves associated with Sudden Cardiac Death Syndrome. The course finished by examining wave propagation in hyperbolic equations using both the simple wave equation and as part of a particle-in-cell code used to study plasma dynamics. The final aspect of the course was a student derived project. The student had to develop both the question to be investigated and the solution. The grade reflected both the difficulty of the question and the depth of the solution.

As each of the different subject areas demanded, information about solving that particular type of differential equation was presented. The numerical method topics of accuracy, stability, consistency, and convergence were presented but not in a rigorous manner. The focus of this course was on the application of the numerical methods, not the methods themselves.

EE 3772 - Laboratory II
This course is the second in the standard sequence of electrical engineering laboratory courses. Here the students obtain their first experience building realistic circuits with both analog and digital circuits being covered. The analog half of the course covers circuits with diodes (including zener diodes), operational-amplifiers, and bipolar junction transistors (BJTs). At the end of the first half, the students design a power supply voltage regulator that incorporated the various topics that had been covered up to that point. The second half of the course focuses on digital circuits. Although it is not assumed that the students have had prior experience with digital circuits, it is certainly helpful if they have. Topics covered include flip-flops, registers, counters, decoders, and encoders. Since ther eis not enough time to cover each topic in depth, emphasis is placed on how realistic circuits vary from the ideal cases studied in other classes. The final two labs of the semester focus on two digital design projects. One is a four-bit digital sequence detector, and the other is a Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) to seven-segment decoder such as would be used in a LCD/LED display in a calculator or watch.

The computer programs PSpice and LabVIEW are incorporated into the laboratory tasks and are used throughout the course. Most of the computer projects are assigned to be handed in before the students perform the in-lab project, so the students have a chance to see the ideal case before they examine the realistic problem. This helps in the translation from the ideal cases they have studied in the classroom to the realistic problems they will encounter in the laboratory. The students work in pairs in the laboratory and hand in one joint report; however, they are expected to do the preparatory work separately, and all exams are on an individual basis.