Information About

Who takes it

This is a seminar course taken by ME graduate students to improve their skills of teaching, seminar presentations, technical and proposal writing. The seminar course is required for all ME PhD students.

What it's about

This course meets once per week, and each session is run by different faculty members in an innovative forum to address the syllabus topics. The purpose is to expose students to a variety of skills necessary to advance as a researcher during and after their PhD studies. The topics of teaching and technical writing and presentation are incredibly important in a student's future success and yet are seldom taught in a systematic fashion in standard PhD curricula. This course addresses this need by tackling these topics drawing on the expertise of our own faculty. The course is about 1/2 seminar and 1/2 interactive discussion. Some sessions are run as panel discussions and in several areas students will actively participate and be provided feedback on their performance by the faculty. Areas for student activity include preparation and presentation of a short mini-lecture on a research topic, and writing a proposal for a research or teaching lab need.

Minisyllabus:

• The Art of Seminar Presentations
• Invited Lecture (Searle Center for Teaching Excellence
• Short (2 min) presentations by students
• How to write a winning proposal
• The Art of Teaching Engineering
• The Art of Technical Writing
• The Art of Job Hunting: Panel Discussion

Assessment/Evaluation:

No grade is given in this zero credit seminar class. Class attendance and participation is mandatory to meet the requirements for the PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Contact:

Professor: Catherine Brinson
e-mail: cbrinson@northwestern.edu

Professor: Sandip Ghosal
e-mail: s-ghosal@northwestern.edu