Teaching Statement
One of the perks of academic life is the opportunity to interact with young and bright students most of whom are at the threshold of stepping into the real world. It gives me immense satisfaction and pleasure that I as a lecturer will have the privilege to take part in the initial stages of their journey. It will also provide me a platform for improving my skills both in terms of expressing myself as well as being a great source of research ideas. Below, I describe in detail my experiences and ideas in teaching:
Previous Experience: I had the privilege of being a teaching assistant (TA) for Polymer Chemistry at Huanghuai University P. R. China during my MS research period. Both these assistantships allowed me to teach a class as well as play an active role in setting up assignments/exams and grading them.
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Following are my observations as a TA/ Lecturer for these courses:
- (a) Students are more receptive in class when visual aids are used during teaching. For example, relevant video clips and pictures about Gas laws help in more conceptual learning.
- (b) During the Advanced Chemistry class, students were taken on a field trip to Chemical Industries to observe the synthesis and processes of chemical production. This stimulated a lot of discussion in class with many students expressing interest in getting involved in similar projects.
- (c) Another valuable point I learned is that students feel very connected to the subject if the experiment's origin is made clear or an attempt is made to connect the concepts to scientific phenomena. For example, being able to connect a polymerization process and its development, and instant connection with the topic especially at an undergraduate level.
My office hours also allowed me to interact with students individually and get their feedback on various issues. For example, I was surprised to learn that many more students than I expected looked through class slides before the class. Given this experience, I will ensure that I will make my teaching slides available beforehand. Another thing I learned the hard way is grading can be a contentious issue if the grading scheme is not made clear beforehand. Students are much happier if a detailed marking scheme is provided for each question in an exam rather than a coarse evaluation. Many finer details that may not be directly discussed in a classroom came to my notice through individual interactions. In addition, I was in charge of mentoring a couple of undergraduate students during my research. I also gave tutorials on my research to an audience, unfamiliar with my area of research. I am hoping to translate all this valuable experience into practice when I teach courses.
Teaching Philosophy
Chemical science is a practical field. Based on my own experience and from the feedback provided by students I believe that students should have hands-on experience in performing experiments or working through problems rather than 1 just a theoretical treatment of the subject. The impact of a hands-on experience tends to stay for a much longer time. I would also like to keep my courses flexible. For example, students can have the option of pursuing a bigger project instead of doing multiple smaller ones. Given the subjective nature of the evaluation of projects, I will pay careful attention to the evaluation criterion. I would like to evaluate my students progressively over the semester through assignments, projects, and quizzes rather than just through tests.
In more advanced courses, tests may be replaced with writing a research paper or a major project. As the world gets increasingly networked, the role of a traditional teaching method may decrease to some extent. However, a teacher would still need to play the key role of inculcating curiosity in learning the various concepts and techniques and showing the joys of exploring the various topics without necessarily focusing on results. To facilitate this, I will keep my classes interactive. I will also introduce discussion sessions on open-ended topics (A simple example could be a discussion on how the future Chemistry would look like in a Chemistry class and lab). I would also like to invite guest lecturers or do a field trip for my courses whenever possible. Lastly, I will ensure that my grading system doesn’t penalize students for doing more exploratory work rather than results-oriented work.
Plan for future
At the undergraduate level, I am interested in teaching core Chemistry courses such as Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Coordination Chemistry, and others. I am also interested in developing and teaching new non-conventional courses such as a course that uses the World Wide Web to introduce and teach the courses using the online database. I believe that these mixed types of courses would be more suitable at an undergrad level since they will be able to provide practical context to otherwise theoretical subjects and potentially inspire students to pursue these subjects at an advanced level. At the graduate level, I am interested in teaching advanced courses such as Advanced Analytical Techniques, Advanced Chromatographic Techniques, Solid State Chemistry and Semiconductors, Research Methodology and Data Handling, and others. In addition, I would also like to teach specialized research courses that focus on research in Nanoscience and Technology, Advance Composite Material, and Inorganic Material synthesis for different applications. Students of late are exposed to a lot of options to pursue at a very early stage and hence decide on their career paths early. As a passionate researcher in the field of Chemistry, I believe that I must expose them to the joys of research and help to spot and groom future scientists early
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