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Newsletter Page 4-5 Page 6 Page 13 Page 14-16 MAEFall 2018 Faculty Profi le Alumni Profi le Student Highlight New Faculty Page 3 Hadas Ritz , Sr. Lecturer Jeff Bleustein, Ph.D. Sarah Morris Nikolaos Bouklas Faculty Profi le Harley-Davidson Ph.D. Candidate Mahdi Esmaily Rajesh Bhaskaran, Former CEO Zhiting Tian Sr. Lecturer BREAKING RULES TO TEACH THOUSANDS ONE STUDENT AT A TIME Page ₃ MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR across many courses (solid mechanics, fl u- Zhiting, and two faculty who started in ids, etc.). As a part of that work, he devel- January 2018 – Nikolaos Bouklas who oped an open source SimCafe for others to works in the area of computational me- use his approaches and examples. More re- chanics, and Mahdi Esmaily who works cently, he developed a MOOC based on his in the area of computational biofl uids. We work in simulation, and it currently serves will highlight Elaine and Atieh in a future as the most popular Cornell MOOC with newslett er after they arrive on campus. over 100K enrolled from more than 170 The newslett er includes updates from countries. reunion, project teams, faculty and stu- Hadas has been an extraordinary in- dent awards, and a profi le of one of our structor for the Sibley School for over eight Ph.D. students, Sarah Morris. Please keep years, teaching a wide variety of courses in touch with us about your news and within and outside her area of expertise. successes through the Alumni link on our She has helped revamp curriculum, rede- website, or simply a quick email to mae_ signed a key undergraduate course, men- [email protected]. tored new faculty in teaching, developed Finally, this newslett er marks the last mathematics teaching tools for engineer- year of my time as Director; I plan to step Dear Sibley School Alumni and Friends: ing undergraduates, and advised under- down as Sibley School Director June 30 Greetings from Ithaca! Your extended Sib- graduates and a project team. As one of 2019, and a new person will take the wheel. ley School family here in Ithaca has spent my colleagues indicated during her recent One of my goals was to produce a newslet- the past year sett ling into our new Upson promotion review: “this is almost too good ter each year as Director – and we did it! A home. While there are some small chal- to be true!” This year, she became a fellow special thank you to Laura Black, and other lenges – the fans in some rooms are loud of the McCormick Engineering Teaching Sibley School staff over the years who real- and faculty say their offi ces are small – the Excellence Institute (MTEI), which now ly made this happen. As with any changing overall feedback has been very positive. enables her to help mentor others in their of the guard moment, one becomes refl ec- Upson is new and modern, with great new teaching. Currently, she is helping lead an tive. A piece of advice I received from one teaching lab spaces, classrooms and confer- eff ort to revamp the junior level required of my role models – Sid Leibovich – before I ence rooms with modern multi-media for curriculum using modern active learning started as Director was to set a goal of mak- connected meetings, larger student collab- methods. ing the School bett er than when I joined it. I orative spaces, and a larger shared student Our alumni spotlight this year is Jeff think that is for others to evaluate, but I will project team wing in the lower level, next to Bleustein. As with many of our alumni, say that this was always my goal. I think a rapid prototype lab which can be viewed Jeff ’s background is wonderfully interest- we have done a lot over the years – with from the fl oor above. Research labs are ing and impactful. After graduating with strong and diverse hiring, modern facili- closer to graduate students and faculty of- a B.S. from Cornell and a M.S. and Ph.D. ties, growth of project teams and modern- fi ces, creating synergies and collaborations from Columbia, he spent some time as a izing instruction, and an expansion of our critical to research these days. We welcome faculty member at Yale before moving to research directions. And, the only reason you to come visit any time – even outside industry. He spent three decades at Har- we were able to accomplish so much was Reunion or Homecoming! ley Davidson, including VP of Engineering because of our collective teamwork – the In our newslett er this year, we high- and Chief Executive Offi cer, President, and faculty, staff and students working togeth- light two of our exceptional Senior Lectur- Chairman of the Board. He also served on er. I thank all of you for your support, and I ers in Dr. Rajesh Bhaskaran and Dr. Hadas President Bush’s President’s Council on the look forward to the directions our next Di- Ritz . Both are award winning instructors, 21st Century Workforce. I think you will rector will take us. and I think you will fi nd their contributions fi nd his story remarkable. Warm regards,......... to our School as extensive and important as In faculty news, we hired three new we all do. faculty this year: Prof. Zhiting Tian, an Rajesh has been the Swanson Director expert in thermal science at the atomistic of Engineering Simulation for nearly two level for energy conversion and manage- Mark Campbell....... decades, thanks to a generous endowment ment, Prof. Elaine Petro who is an expert in from one of our alum, John Swanson. Many propulsion for spacecraft, and Prof. Atieh alum will remember Rajesh because of his Moridi, an expert in metal based additive teaching of common simulation concepts manufacturing. This newslett er highlights 2 | MAE Magazine FACULTY PROFILE/ RESEARCH MOVE FROM SAGE ON THE STAGE TO GUIDE ON THE SIDE by: Geoffrey Giller r. Rajesh Bhaskaran is the Swanson Director of Engineering Simulation and a senior lecturer in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. For the last several years, Bhaskaran has been develop- Ding and refining his MOOC—that is, a Massive Open Online Course. His course (https://www.edx.org/ Rajesh on Engineering: Snapshot from a self-recorded video course/a-hands-on-introduction-to-engineering-simulations), which explaining big ideas in fi nite element analysis. is free and open to anyone, teaches students how to solve engineering problems using software made by ANSYS, an engineering simulation software maker. The inspiration for the MOOC came from a realization he had in the classroom while teaching engineering students at Cornell. Often, Bhaskaran says, he would put videos online as a guide, but in class, he would sometimes tell the students to do things diff erently than how he had done them in the videos—say, because he had made a mistake, or because he realized there was a bett er way. “Nobody would do it the way I would tell them in class,” he says with a laugh. Instead, they would almost invariably follow the online instructions. “Whatever was online, [the students] treated like gospel,” he said in a recent video interview (htt p://www.cornell.edu/video/rajesh-bhas- karan-online-learning-engineering-education). Bhaskaran quickly realized this is how students learn best: watching videos they can pause, rewind, and skip through, unlike a live in-person lecture. So Bhaskaran has done what he calls “fl ipping the classroom.” Essentially, he assigns lectures in video format as home- work. Then in class students work through problems, with Bhaskaran there to guide them, answer questions, and provide assistance as necessary. “It’s much more interesting for me and much more valuable for the student,” he said in the interview. In his MOOC, Bhaskaran can’t provide the in-person guidance that he does for his students at Cornell. But he can include assess- ments that check to make sure students understand the material, and he has videos that guide enrollees through exercises. With a cumulative enrollment exceeding 100,000 students, clearly his techniques are resonating with a broad audience. And the students are not just in the United States: in fact, a higher percentage of them are in India, followed by the U.S. and then Brazil. In total, students from 173 countries have enrolled in Bhaskaran’s MOOC. Ultimately, Bhaskaran’s goal is to get students to move away from novice learning—in which they can follow a prescribed set of instructions, but don’t have a deeper understanding that would let them solve new problems—towards expert thinking. It’s the diff er- ence between practicing mindlessly and practicing deliberately, he says. The latt er will set students up for success once they’re out in the world and no longer have him—or his videos—to guide them. Sample result from the fi nite element analysis of a bolted fl ange, an example developed with an industry engineer. Pressure distribution over a wind turbine rotor calculated using computational fl uid dynamics, another example developed with industry input. 3 | MAE Magazine FACULTY PROFILE/ RESEARCH INTERVIEW WITH Hadas Ritz, Sr. Lecturer by: Damon Bogetti Pérez teaching of the classes rather than just the really make human connections with stu- straight engineering research. It was really dents. I do prett y well in the classroom, and during graduate school that I realized that in offi ce hours, but I really want to make was going to be the path of success for me.” those human connections. I have over three hundred students this semester, but I have Do you think that choice has been a good a few of them down! I don’t know all of one? Have you enjoyed occupying the their names, but I’m lett ing them know that teaching end of the spectrum? I’m making an eff ort to learn, and the stu- “Oh yeah, absolutely.