Teaching is one of the most significant
characteristics of humankind since it is what makes knowledge, an intangible
and invaluable asset, transient from generation to generation. The
survivability of knowledge is mostly dependent on the teacher and the teacher’s
ability to become a good teacher while also being a good learner. The
importance of this ability is very familiar to me through observed experience in
my own family where both of my parents are teachers.
Aside from tutoring my classmates for free in high
school, my professional teaching experience started right after I became a graduate
assistant at the Informatics Institute in the
After I started the Ph.D. program at the Department
of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the
I would feel comfortable teaching any of core
industrial engineering courses as well as any technology course. Aside from the
spreadsheet-based
DSS course, I can offer to teach a database DSS (using Access, VBA, and
SQL) or web-enabled DSS course (using VB.NET). I would also be capable
of developing a graduate or undergraduate introductory or advanced level course
in optimization
in data mining. I would prefer to teach a variety of courses rather
than teach the same course repeatedly in order to refresh my background
frequently.
In all of my teaching experiences, I have learned
that communication is one of the most important components. The efficiency of
teaching relies heavily on having an open channel of continuous feedback from
students. I always encourage students to ask questions and vocalize their
opinions. I believe that students can learn the fundamental subjects better
with the help of simple examples. Using this teaching technique as a building
block, more complex subjects can be taught more easily.
I think that being available to the students
outside the class is almost as crucial as teaching in the class. I believe that
the learning experience does not end at the end of the class. Aside from
regular office hours, I encourage the students to make appointments anytime
they need help. I also answer their questions via email at any time of the day.
I enjoy helping the students with their projects, acting as a team member, and
challenging their creativity by asking them questions.
I would like to emphasize again that I believe that
good teachers are also good students. Educators should always look for
opportunities to improve their teaching skills, attend teaching workshops, and
seminars. With this philosophy in mind, I attended the teaching colloquium at
the Annual INFORMS Meeting in
Below, I give more detailed information on my
teaching experience and my future teaching interests.
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Decision
Support Systems for Industrial and Systems Engineers
Dept of
Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Fall 2006,
Spring 2006, Fall 2005
This course is offered primarily to industrial and
systems engineering (ISE) students at both the undergraduate and graduate
level. The main purpose of the course is to teach ISE students how to develop a
decision support system (DSS) using Excel and Visual Basic for Applications
(VBA) for Excel. This course provides students with a set of tools that enables
them to develop DSS applications that can employ complex models and solution
methods in optimization, simulation, and statistical analysis
There are two major parts of the course: learning
how to develop a DSS, and developing a DSS for a real-life problem. The first
part of the class shows students how to use various Excel features and how to
expand on these features by programming in VBA. The class meets twice a week
for two consecutive hours each time. Usually new course material is taught in
the first hour of the class, followed by an in-class assignment in the second
hour. These assignments are generally case studies from real life applications
with components applicable to the tools learned in the previous hour of the
class. In addition to in-class assignments, homework assignments help the
students do more practice on similar problems. There is one midterm exam given,
which is a timed, in-class, open book test to assess the proficiency of the
students on the basic course material. This exam is given after all the course
material is covered, which marks approximately the end of the first part of the
course.
In the second part of the course, students develop
full DSS applications through a team project. The students, having learned all
the material they need to develop a full DSS, work in teams of two to three
students. During this period, the progress of each DSS project is supervised by
the instructor. The class continues to meet during the class hours and the instructor
provides help and guidance for the project teams. To ensure a high quality
level, three intermediate progress reports are required to be submitted by each
group. The instructor provides feedback to the students based on the evaluation
of these progress reports. At the end of the semester, each project group gives
a presentation on the DSS they developed and a demonstration of their
application, which is assessed by the students in the class. The final
application grade is given by the instructor.
Facilities
Planning and Material Handling
Dept of
Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Fall 2004
This course instructs students on principles and
methods for analyzing and designing plant facilities. Selected topics include
systematic and computerized layout planning, warehouse design, materials
handling and automated storage retrieval systems. I made sure to differentiate
the facilities course from a work design course in our department by giving
more emphasis on the theoretical part of facility planning.
From my teaching assistant experience, I observed
that the students needed more time on understanding the facilities planning
tools and methods before they were asked to apply them in their projects.
Therefore, as a new addition to the course, aside from regular classes, I
included six interactive problem solving sessions and showed detailed example
problems ranging from project management to layout planning and from warehouse
design to manufacturing operations. I also took my students on several field
trips to illustrate the implementation of the techniques taught in the course
in industry. I took them to the Dollar General Warehouse in Alachua, which is a
very large facility, using up-to-date facilities planning practices and
state-of-the-art material handling equipment.
Since a facilities design project is the main requirement
of the course, I required a number of facilities planning tools and methods to
be included in their projects in order to strengthen their understanding of the
material taught. Aside from encouraging the students to be creative in the
design part, I emphasized the importance of quantitative verification within
the industrial engineering context in every step of their project preparation.
After giving a short tutorial on making webpages, I also required the students
to build a webpage for their project and make their work available online as
they prepare their project, so that they can benchmark their project with the
other projects.
Introduction
to Information Technologies and Applications
Informatics
Institute,
Spring 2000,
Fall 1999, Spring 1999, Fall 1998
This course teaches students the basics of computer
hardware and software, commonly used computer applications such as word
processors, spreadsheets, internet browsers, etc. I started as an instructor
and the vice-coordinator of the course and then became the primary coordinator
with a total student count of more than 1500, while continuing to teach a
number of sections. This course became a success in reducing computer
illiteracy in all of the departments of METU, and has been a standard course in
the freshman curriculum.
Teaching
Assistant Experience
I have had several semesters of teaching assistant
(TA) experience. Aside from general grading and organization responsibilities,
I also contributed to the preparation of course materials and a lot of time
guiding students in their work.
- Decision Support
Systems for Industrial and Systems Engineers (Spring 2004) The
teaching assistant experience in this course provided me the potential
problems I need to consider and the initial feedback to improve my
communication with the student before I start teaching the course. Aside
from regular grading responsibilities, I helped the students with their
projects, held extended office hours and helped the instructor with the
preparation of homework assignments and the midterm exam.
- Facilities Planning
and Material Handling (Fall 2003, Spring 2003, Fall 2002, Spring 2002, Fall
2001)
I have worked with many
professors as a TA for this course, including Dr. Richard L. Francis and Dr. D.
Jack Elzinga. Throughout my TA experience, I filled in for the instructors
almost every semester, prepared study sets and exams, guided the students as
they completed their semester projects, and helped the instructors evaluate the
projects. Some other contributions that I made for this course include
developing a virtual plant tour for students, compiling an array of software
packages such as WHAP, BLOCPLAN and Visio and preparing tutorials with
step-by-step examples.
- Modeling and
Simulation
(Spring 2001, Fall 2000)
In my last year before I
received my MS degree, I worked as the sole teaching assistant in the “Modeling
and Simulation” graduate program which was offered by the Informatics Institute
and taught by the professors from the Industrial Engineering and the
Informatics Institute. As an assistant for this program, I helped students in
courses ranging from mathematical modeling to statistical data analysis and
simulation.
FUTURE
TEACHING INTERESTS
I would
be comfortable teaching any core industrial engineering course, from operations
research and statistics to production planning and inventory control, at any
level. I believe a well rounded professor of industrial engineering may teach a
wide range of IE courses to refresh his or her background knowledge frequently,
which in turn, is essential for creativity in research. Below, I included the
courses that I am experienced with and would be ready to start teaching.
Information Technology
Courses
I am a strong advocate of the courses that combine
information technologies with industrial engineering tools such as the Decision
Support Systems using Excel and VBA course I have been teaching. This
course shows them how to package the methodologies they learn from their core
curriculum in a user-friendly system designed to aid a decision maker. Students
become equipped with not only Excel and VBA for Excel skills, but also with the
general knowledge of how to develop a DSS for any model in any environment.
Students are enabled to better communicate with future colleague, supervisors,
and clients by learning how to ask for necessary input, solve a problem
efficiently, and display relative output to any decision maker. Many students
contact me after they have graduated to express their appreciation of this
course. I have completed the Web-Based Decision Support Systems
course in my Ph.D. program, which focuses on incorporating industrial
engineering tools in DSS applications via database applications and web-based
interfaces using the VB.NET platform. The general structure of this course is
very similar to the spreadsheet based DSS course I have been teaching.
Therefore I can comfortably teach this course at both graduate and
undergraduate level.
Data Mining
Courses
The amount and variety of information generated
every day is beyond imagination. The valuable knowledge buried in this
information overflow has become exceedingly important in both academic and
industry research. Data mining field
offers methods to uncover this knowledge, most of which are based on core
optimization problems. Computer Science departments recently started offering
data mining courses in their curriculum, however I believe that, due to the
strong optimization background, industrial engineering programs have even
higher potential to become successful in teaching data mining courses and
empower IE students in the emerging field of data mining.
Seminar Courses
I believe that sharing research ideas and attacking
new problems in collaboration with other researchers make a significant
difference in research productivity. Well structured and interactive seminar
courses play a very important role in this collaboration. I have started a seminar
in data mining, systems analysis and optimization in biomedicine, which
initiated productive collaborations among the participants. I am planning to
start a similar group, starting with my PhD students and expanding towards
possible collaborators. I would be more than willing to initiate a series of
parallel seminars in collaboration with other interested faculty to build a
strong social network among the students, as well as the faculty. I would like
to initiate seminars on optimization in data mining and information
technologies.
I
would like to be involved in a continuous effort to improve the undergraduate
and graduate curriculums based on the feedback from students and faculty. The
material taught both at the undergraduate and graduate levels should be
up-to-date and well suited for cutting-edge research and future industry needs.
Last but not least, I would like to advocate building new platforms to increase
the interaction between the faculty and the students.