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.