As I foreshadowed in an earlier edition of Gnamma, I taught a class this just-recently-ended Spring Semester called "Field Sensing in Environmental Engineering."
Details first: I co-taught the class with my friend James Butler, also a student researcher in my department, who focuses, in research at least, on chemistry and air quality (whereas I think about physics and water: we're at different ends of the discipline of environmental engineering). We had six civil & environmental engineering students fit this never-before-made class into their schedules (five undergraduates, one masters student).
I was inspired to develop the class out of my learn-as-you-fail experiences using electronic sensors for a variety of research projects. I felt like there was a need for students to have some exposure to various sensors at a tangible level and exposure to how we can think about their utility—all stuff that I wish I had received! Using electronic sensors in the field is also an excellent professional skill, in a world where precision agriculture, environmental clean-ups, and regulatory monitoring are all on the rise.
Playing with pedagogical norms, especially in STEM, is also a lifelong interest of mine. I found the topic of field sensing a perfect opportunity to bring broader conversations about social impact and data sovereignty into an engineering classroom. Field sensing also meant I could take students who are under the engineering undergraduate pressure-cooker books-and-formulas curriculum out to some weird muddy place in San Francisco Bay, and do field work with tangible stakes and output.
If I were to run the class again, I would jump into planning our pinnacle event of the semester (an actual field deployment of some oceanography sensors near the mouth of Pinole Creek) sooner than we did... unfortunately, the end of the semester ended up quite rushed. Despite this, we were able to make a class that embodies many principles I hold dear of good class design. This meant lots of student agency: they chose their project topics, techniques, and site. All of these choices were channeled through a nearly-completely project-based course structure (barring a couple early-semester "theory" readings and a couple homeworks that we think served as real practice for their analysis). James and I mostly just helped guide and scope the students' natural interests, while also connecting them with resources. We, the instructors, have been regularly impressed with how engaged our students were, in different ways. Some were willing to ask broad questions and laugh loudly in an engineering classroom, some dove deep into the history of the site we chose, some jumped at opportunities to chip away at a poorly-structured project despite other demands on their time. I'm so thankful for them taking the risk to enroll and participate. Every teacher knows that engaged students are one of the highest rewards.
Teaching should also stretch the teacher. I learned that I could benefit from practice to help guide open-ended humanistic conversations. I was routinely reminded to try to communicate more and more clearly with the students, especially around concrete expectations for assignments. And I also grappled with how complicated field deployments can actually be. It was challenging to lay the groundwork, make decisions, plan, enact, and analyze all within a 15-week semester!
I recently wrapped up all my data collection for my dissertation and am beginning to shift into a mode of just analysis and writing... as I enter my last year (???) of being a student researcher, I've been reflecting on the experience so far. I'm paraphrasing some tweet I saw years ago here (iirc), but it's easy to look at life like tetris and feel like successes disappear and failures pile up. I had some glamorous notions of what I could accomplish in graduate school, many of which were laughable in the face of the lurching, patchwork reality of it (in COVID, no less). Going forward, my opportunities to contribute to and benefit from this huge institution of resources are starting to wane. But over just a couple years I have learned so much, mostly through my work with the U.S. Geological Survey, about how to make field deployments with electronic environmental sensors *work*. And through this class, I was able to synthesize this, condense it into a syrup of a syllabus, and see how some eager students could drink it up. The whole process helped me recognize that in all the stressful ambiguous mess of graduate school, I have learned some shit! And the process of development, refinement, teaching, and mentoring will go down as one of my proudest, shining, efforts at Berkeley.
In the classroom, in the field,
Lukas
Details first: I co-taught the class with my friend James Butler, also a student researcher in my department, who focuses, in research at least, on chemistry and air quality (whereas I think about physics and water: we're at different ends of the discipline of environmental engineering). We had six civil & environmental engineering students fit this never-before-made class into their schedules (five undergraduates, one masters student).
I was inspired to develop the class out of my learn-as-you-fail experiences using electronic sensors for a variety of research projects. I felt like there was a need for students to have some exposure to various sensors at a tangible level and exposure to how we can think about their utility—all stuff that I wish I had received! Using electronic sensors in the field is also an excellent professional skill, in a world where precision agriculture, environmental clean-ups, and regulatory monitoring are all on the rise.
Playing with pedagogical norms, especially in STEM, is also a lifelong interest of mine. I found the topic of field sensing a perfect opportunity to bring broader conversations about social impact and data sovereignty into an engineering classroom. Field sensing also meant I could take students who are under the engineering undergraduate pressure-cooker books-and-formulas curriculum out to some weird muddy place in San Francisco Bay, and do field work with tangible stakes and output.
If I were to run the class again, I would jump into planning our pinnacle event of the semester (an actual field deployment of some oceanography sensors near the mouth of Pinole Creek) sooner than we did... unfortunately, the end of the semester ended up quite rushed. Despite this, we were able to make a class that embodies many principles I hold dear of good class design. This meant lots of student agency: they chose their project topics, techniques, and site. All of these choices were channeled through a nearly-completely project-based course structure (barring a couple early-semester "theory" readings and a couple homeworks that we think served as real practice for their analysis). James and I mostly just helped guide and scope the students' natural interests, while also connecting them with resources. We, the instructors, have been regularly impressed with how engaged our students were, in different ways. Some were willing to ask broad questions and laugh loudly in an engineering classroom, some dove deep into the history of the site we chose, some jumped at opportunities to chip away at a poorly-structured project despite other demands on their time. I'm so thankful for them taking the risk to enroll and participate. Every teacher knows that engaged students are one of the highest rewards.
Teaching should also stretch the teacher. I learned that I could benefit from practice to help guide open-ended humanistic conversations. I was routinely reminded to try to communicate more and more clearly with the students, especially around concrete expectations for assignments. And I also grappled with how complicated field deployments can actually be. It was challenging to lay the groundwork, make decisions, plan, enact, and analyze all within a 15-week semester!
I recently wrapped up all my data collection for my dissertation and am beginning to shift into a mode of just analysis and writing... as I enter my last year (???) of being a student researcher, I've been reflecting on the experience so far. I'm paraphrasing some tweet I saw years ago here (iirc), but it's easy to look at life like tetris and feel like successes disappear and failures pile up. I had some glamorous notions of what I could accomplish in graduate school, many of which were laughable in the face of the lurching, patchwork reality of it (in COVID, no less). Going forward, my opportunities to contribute to and benefit from this huge institution of resources are starting to wane. But over just a couple years I have learned so much, mostly through my work with the U.S. Geological Survey, about how to make field deployments with electronic environmental sensors *work*. And through this class, I was able to synthesize this, condense it into a syrup of a syllabus, and see how some eager students could drink it up. The whole process helped me recognize that in all the stressful ambiguous mess of graduate school, I have learned some shit! And the process of development, refinement, teaching, and mentoring will go down as one of my proudest, shining, efforts at Berkeley.
In the classroom, in the field,
Lukas