VP Education: Interview with Dr. Jeffrey West

Hi everyone,

I can’t believe my term as VP Education is coming to an end. This being my last article, I would like to take an opportunity to thank everyone who worked with me to make it a great 16 months. This week’s issue is an interview of Dr. Jeffrey West; he is a professor in the Civil Engineering department, and the winner of the EngSoc Teaching Excellence Award. We asked him a number of questions and this is what he had to say:

• When did you decide to be a professor?
  When I was a Master’s student (TA for undergrad), I got great feedback from students, and hence teaching seemed to be a talent. Originally I planned to go into industry after my Master’s. I decided to pursue my PhD since I enjoyed research too. I lived in US at the time after completing my PhD, and still planned to pursue academia, though I felt that I lacked real-world experience, so I decided to apply to both academia and industrial jobs. I ended up with offers from both but chose to work in industry, at a Texan consulting firm. I felt it was important to gain industrial experience prior to teaching.

• What do you enjoy the most about teaching?
  Immediate feedback in the classroom, and discussion and seeing the understanding amongst students. When students seek help from me when stressed or upset, making students leave feeling confident is what is most rewarding about the job. Seeing them at capstone symposium and graduation having applied course material is also rewarding. The biggest legacy I hope to leave is to have many civil engineering graduates apply what they learned in my class.

• What do you think is a reason why students enjoy your lectures so much?
  I care about what I’m doing. I try to convey how what we’re doing is important to their degree. I make the course organized so students are clear about expectations, and try to challenge students while being very fair. Students are able to appreciate the material, stay on track and keep up with the course. I aim to primarily use a blackboard due to the conductive nature of course material. I always design lecture notes with the goal of students being able to refer back to notes later and be able to make sense of them – design while considering students’ point of view.

• What do you think other Faculty members could do to improve students’ learning experience in lectures?
  It is challenging but personally I’m reluctant to take on electronic means for teaching (e.g. iClickers, modules for main course content). Engaging students via portraying energy and passion from self, showing them where and how course content will be applied, as well as connections between classroom and workplace is what I find works best. Hold their attention! Key piece of advice: have variety in the presentation of lecture material rather than writing out endless notes. Be passionate to excite students!

• What is the one piece of advice you would give to students who want to improve the quality of their learning?
  Easy to say, but I understand its hard for undergrads to do: going above and beyond assigned expectations to understand WHY, and not just how, they’re doing things. Understanding the underlying concepts and assumptions, not just the results of calculations, especially for highly quantitative assignments.

• What do you enjoy the least about teaching?
  Two things; one, seeing a student who’s not engaged or is struggling and being unable to reach out. It bothers me to see a student fail a course. Second, at the end of the term, having to mark around 120 exams. But it’s important and part of the job, so I have to do a good job of it.

• Given the opportunity, how would you improve yourself as a professor?
  A thing I don’t have much of anymore is time. This is a normal thing in life, and academia especially (due to admin and managing grad students). I want more time to reflect on teaching and to try different things in teaching. I tend to use a traditional style of teaching, albeit with some technology, but I want to try reworking an entire course. I’m not sure how but I need time to see how others do that and how to implement to some of the courses I teach.

• In your years of being at UW, what changes have you seen within the Department of Civil Engineering and the Faculty of Engineering (e.g. curriculum, learning environment, etc.)?
  The faculty’s grown, the number of programs and students have grown. My 3B course (TE), started with 60, now it’s around 120. In curriculum, we’ve brought in more application, to make the course work more relevant, as well as more design and creativity in problem solving. My teaching style reflects this, where I would give a problem that looks like a real building or real garage. We’re also introducing more small projects to apply hands-on experiments.

• What changes would you like to see made to the Department and Faculty?
  As associate chair, I’m quite knowledgeable about what goes on in other programs. Deepening learning by providing hands-on experience, be it in the field or the lab, would be a great change. The problem is working it into the curriculum, which is hard to do since it takes time and resources. As faculty, we’re moving that way, and with E7, the Engineering Ideas Clinic will facilitate this. We have some Clinic ideas. We need to embrace and be open to other ideas for experiential learning. This is a change that is starting and we need to push this momentum. We try to shape students into great engineers. We also want to increase level of importance on communication skills, such as writing and presentation.

• What do you think is the most impressive Civil Engineering feat (presently)?
  I really love long span bridges (being a structural engineer). I can’t pick a single achievement though. Top three would be the channel tunnel, the Burj Khalifa, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Or maybe even the old Quebec Bridge. For the Brooklyn and Quebec bridges, the fact that they constructed them at the time is what is impressive. They used gut understanding, without aid of modeling software from today.

I would like to thank Dr. West for his time. He is really an inspiration to many students in his department. Keep up the great work Professor! I would also like to thank Kathy Becker, Alice Van Ngo, and Alex Sterling for assisting me in the TEA process.