Professor Alp Sehirlioglu, who will teach ENGR 145: Chemistry of Materials for the third time in Spring 2021, has begun to build an application base for the information he covers in his class.  Applications chosen will be based on topics covered in different engineering classes and will be extracted to their common fundamentals related to materials science. Information from the base will be converted to homework and exam questions.  He is collaborating with one faculty from each engineering department. A Nord grant supports an undergraduate student, Joel Frostad,  who has served as a teaching assistant in the past to assist with the project. 

“One of the outcomes of the proposed development will be a more informed undergraduate freshman class in making their choices as well as understand what all the engineering departments do,” said Sehirlioglu.  “This is critical as both the industry and research world are becoming more interdisciplinary.”  He hopes that ENGR 145 can both help students better understand what each engineering field studies and strengthen the class as a core to all engineering.

All engineering students are required to take ENGR 145; most take the course in the spring semester of their freshman year.  The number of students in the class often exceeds 350 and can sometimes reach 400.  Sehirlioglu’s goals each semester are to teach the students the basics of materials chemistry, to relate the basics to applications and to introduce “engineering think” beyond solving certain types of problems.  His third goal is one he wants to focus on.  “The students assume if they learn how to solve certain types of problems, they think they understand the concepts,” said Sehirlioglu.  “Then when a different type of problem is provided which can be solved with the tools they learned in the class (which is what engineers are supposed to do), they struggle.”

Sehirlioglu hopes that by creating the base, all eight departments of engineering at CWRU can get the most out of the course.  He also hopes to survey students at the end of their sophomore and junior years to see how ENGR 145 helped them in courses in departments that require ENGR 145.

As part of the Nord project, related faculty members will meet with Sehirlioglu and Frostad to evaluate the homework and exam questions created in relation to their respective fields.  Frostad will work 20 hours a week on the project.