Teaching materials science with a twist

At Carleton, spring break marks the transition from winter term to spring term, with all the usual hectic aspects of tying up the ends of one set of courses and getting ready for another. This winter I taught Physics 260 Materials Science; I’ve taught this course twice before, and enjoyed it both times. However, giving students an introduction to the vibrant and interdisciplinary field of materials science in 10 weeks, with only intro chem/intro physics as a prerequisite, is a challenge. Part of the challenge is that students come to the course with a wide variety of backgrounds, ranging from students who have only met the minimum prerequisites to senior chemistry or physics majors with extensive advanced coursework. Another challenge is choosing what to cover in ten weeks. Although the course was generally well received when I taught it in the past, a number of students mentioned that they felt the breadth of topics covered caused the course to feel a bit disjointed. Shortly after I last taught the course, in the winter of 2008, the Materials Research Society (MRS) published a special issue of the MRS Bulletin, “Harnessing Materials for Energy.” The special MRS Bulletin combined with the student comments gave me an idea for revamping the course, namely teaching materials science, but focusing on materials and how they can address energy and environmental challenges.

This year was my first attempt at teaching the course with a focus on energy/environmental issues. The course took the following shape. I spent the first three weeks introducing a few fundamental concepts for materials science: bonding and crystal structure, defects and diffusion, phase diagrams, and mechanical properties of materials. The remainder of the term was broken up into three majors units: materials for solar energy conversion, smart materials for energy efficiency,  and plastics and materials life cycle issues. The materials for solar energy conversion required an introduction to semiconductors and p-n junctions. In addition to exploring the basics of traditional solar cells, I also asked students to research dye-sensitized solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and organic solar cells, and our discussion of solar energy conversion wasn’t limited to photovoltaics. We also discussed thermoelectrics and materials issues for concentrated solar power applications. The second unit, on smart materials, focused on shape memory alloys for smart grid applications and electrochromic materials for smart glass.*  I wasn’t able to have students explore as many of the other smart materials for energy efficient buildings as I had hoped, but I think with some redesign I can integrate other smart materials in the future. The final unit on plastics provided a basic introduction to polymers, traditional and biodegradable, as well as a discussion of materials lifecycle analysis.

While I really like the conceptual framework of the course, the implementation was a bit uneven this term, as is often the case after a significant course overhaul. I’ll certainly keep the energy and the environment focus when I teach materials science in the future. On the course evaluation, when I asked students what topics were their favorite/least favorite, there was a nearly uniform distribution of all the topics we covered so I likely will keep a similar array of topics next time. I need to improve the coordination between the readings, the in-class activities, and the assignments, but as I mentioned, that’s to be expected considering the new direction for the course.

Finding a text for this course was hard. We used Hummel’s Understanding Materials Science, Stevens’ Green Plastics, Ashby’s Materials and the Environment, and the April 2008 MRS Bulletin. These texts served their purpose although I’ll be keeping my eyes open for other options.  (In the virtual realm, the MRS has a very nice blog with recent research updates about materials for energy applications.)

The weekly course assignments contained a mix of writing, problem solving, and hands-on activities. By far, the hands-on activities were the most well-received. I had students build  and test their own dye-sensitized solar cells following the method laid out in Greg Smestad’s paper, “Education and solar conversion: Demonstrating electron transfer,” in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 55, 157 (1998). Students also deposited and tested electrochromic films, an activity developed by the University of Wisconsin MRSEC.

All in all, I’m excited about the potential directions for the future development of this course, and I’m thankful that this year’s students were patient as I gave the course its first test-drive.

 

 

* I was particularly interested in electrochromic glass because a world leader in the production of electrochromic glass, SAGE Electrochromics, is located in a town about 15 minutes south of here. (We visited SAGE on a class field trip.)

Empathy and distance

Typically, when you (students or faculty) interact officially with a Dean’s office, it’s high up there on the list of the emotionally intense professional interactions you are going to have that week, that month, that year, or possibly in your life up to that point (consider for example,  job candidates or students who are meeting me about issues of academic integrity which may result in their suspension or dismissal from the college). To the extent that I do my job well in these situations, it is because — distinct from the intellectual challenges –  I am also empathetic about this emotional intensity and am able to genuinely identify and reflect what the other person is feeling.

This role of empathy is something that I have been getting steadily more used to since I started as a faculty member, when I look back, and while it’s occasionally very challenging, it’s also a way in which I have appreciated growing (up). The big recent learning curve for me has been not only the ramping up of the emotional intensity in the Dean’s office, but also the quantity of such events; there are weeks when I have ten or more such situations. This means that I cannot afford to hold these intensities within me and must learn to be in the moment, but not of it; that is, to be empathetic, but also to hold all of these at a distance, ultimately, so I don’t go home emotionally wrung out day after day after day. I haven’t quite figured this out yet, but am learning perforce.

Just so that we’re clear about the motivation for this post: I am not complaining about this. Further, this isn’t an ER, where everyone’s situation is an emergency, and nor is it quite like the lives of the Dean of Students office, who have to deal with the emotional aspect on a far more continuous basis. Still, it’s something new, and part of my dean-blogging, as it were, about what I’ve learned in this office.

Advice on the tenure process

As Arjendu noted in his last post, I got tenure this winter. Needless to say, I’m thrilled to be able to be a part of the Carleton community for the long term. What a privilege!

Nevertheless, the process of getting here wasn’t easy. There are two types of challenging experiences: those that invigorate you, causing you to grow and stretch in ways that you never thought possible, and those that dishearten you, reshaping you in ways that leave you feeling like a shell of your former self. My tenure-track experience has been a bit of both. There were numerous times over the past few years where I wanted to blog about some aspect of being a junior faculty member, but couldn’t find the appropriate words. Distilling my reflections on some of those unbloggable moments, however, there is one topic that I think is worth commenting on, namely the role of advice and mentoring for junior faculty members.

Some of my conflicting feelings about my time as a junior faculty member can be characterized by a general feeling of being adrift in a sea of advice. Everywhere I turned I felt like I was bombarded by new (and incompatible) advice about how to get tenure. At times the advice seemed reasonable, at other times outlandish, but rarely did it feel comfortable.  The onslaught of advice left me feeling wholly inadequate — I could never live up to all the advice given.

Take for example one of the most common pieces of advice given to junior faculty, “Find yourself a mentor.” This advice is akin to telling a single person who wishes s/he was married, “Find yourself a spouse.” One can’t simply grab the nearest person and make him or her a mentor. Yet every article I read about the importance of finding a mentor outside your department made me feel like a failure for not having one. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of people I could turn to for help. As I’ve mentioned before, I am lucky to be a department with extremely supportive colleagues. I could go to them with questions about a variety of topics—how to handle a particularly challenging situation in one of my classes, what I needed to do to improve a grant proposal, or reassurance that the particular feeling of work-life imbalance was to be expected given particular circumstances. Nevertheless, my senior colleagues were inherently judges of my performance and so there were things that I could not discuss with them, or when I asked, there were times when I was told that they could not help me.  Having the right mentor would have been incredibly valuable at those times.

Beyond getting tenure, my goal as a junior faculty member was to build the foundation of a professional life that would be personally satisfying, and how-to-get-tenure advice sometimes conflicted with personal values and priorities. I suppose all’s well that ends well, but the process of getting here… let’s just say, don’t ask me for advice.

Tenure

Readers of this blog will have certainly noticed that the quality and thoughtfulness of the writing jumped once Melissa joined up as a co-author. What most of you might not have known was that Melissa was doing something somewhat rare in academia when she started doing this:  She was blogging eponymously pre-tenure. You could scroll back through the blog to see what she has had to say, but what you should notice is that she does not shy away from speaking her mind, and even from showing her fears and hesitations about her work. Now, transparency is something I strongly believe in, and encourage, but there are those who might have advised her that this was not very politic and I would’ve been devastated if my invitation had somehow affected her career negatively.

Well, I am glad to say that that particular issue is moot. Melissa is now tenured at Carleton. You can read the official announcement here (along with news about other friends of ours). To this I will add two snippets extracted from my letter to the tenure committee: “I admire and respect her tremendously as a teacher, as a physicist, and as a colleague-citizen both of Carleton College and of the intellectual ‘external college’ of physicists and teachers of physics … Melissa has already proved a remarkable asset to the Department and the College, and these are very early days given her relative youth. She has exceptional potential for growth as a teacher and as a researcher. I expect her to become a leader at the college level (unless she is distracted by her opportunities nationally for the APS or AAPT, and perhaps even if she is so distracted). She will continue to be an asset for years to come[.]“

I truly doubt that her status change is going to affect her honesty and transparency, and that’s the way it should be. But I’m very glad, nonetheless.