Miscellaneous

Prof. Personalities – Sarah Meunier

How long have you been teaching at Waterloo?
I taught my first course at Waterloo in fall 2014. So I guess I’m going up on 4 years.

What courses do you teach?
I teach a lot of first years. I teach CHE 102, I do that one every single fall. I branch out a little bit and teach the chemical concepts course for 1B. Right now I’m also teaching CHE 322, it’s a numerical methods course. I’ve taught CHE 420 which is process control.

Favourite course to teach?
I really, really love to teach CHE 102. I usually don’t teach chemical engineering CHE 102. I teach the electrical engineering, computer engineering, or mechanical engineering students. When In the chemical engineering courses most of the students know why they’re taking this course and it’s pretty easy to put that relationship between what you’re going to use it for. But I really like to teach other disciplines CHE 102 because I can try and convince them that chemistry is important to everybody. Whether I’m successful or not is a whole other story. Especially with electrical students because there is a lot of electrochemistry. For mechanical students I try and focus a little more on materials, because that’s something that they’ll study later. I like to prove to everybody that chemistry is important to everybody. I find that fun and I get first year students who are completely new to the whole university thing. I try and get them into the university culture and figure out what the university life is, which is also fun.

How’d you end up as a professor?
That’s been a little bit of back and forth. I graduated from UWaterloo with my PhD, but I had son right after I graduated, so I spent a year and a half on maternity leave with him. I kept debating where I was going to go and what I wanted to do afterwards. But I came across two opportunities and one was for teaching and one was for research in industry. I couldn’t choose between the two so I ended up doing both part-time. As the years passed, I ended up doing less research and more teaching. So I still do a little bit of research, but I do way more teaching. Some semesters I do more teaching and less research. Some semesters I do less teaching and more research. It’s converging on more teaching and less research.
Favourite part of being a professor?
I totally live for that Aha! moment. When you’re working on something with a student and all of a sudden you can see in their body language, in their face and their eyes that all of a sudden it clicks. I love, love that moment. I love just sitting working one-on-one and you see things click and things start to work. You realize you’ve made it. That’s my success, when I know that I see that click.

Hardest part?
I guess when it doesn’t click. When you work really hard with a student and you’re grading their final exam and you realize that they never really got it, no matter how hard you worked and how hard you tried to explain things in different ways and work with different examples. You realize even though they worked so hard, that they didn’t get it. I find that really difficult.

Teaching philosophy?
I teach a lot of first year courses, so I usually have around a hundred student in my classroom. So in general, I try to look at things in as many different ways as I can, figuring I might get a certain group of students by looking at it from a certain perspective and try and come around it a different way with different media. In CHE 102, I liked to use a lot of videos or different types of examples. Sometimes it’s the concept that people get, sometimes it’s watching a video or seeing some sort of demonstration. So just approaching things in as many different ways as I can with the hope that if one of those methods click then you got that topic.

How many people come into CHE 102 without knowing the factor label method?
A large percentage. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many. But when we start that CHE 102 lecture with how to make sure that your units always work out and that this is a rule of life rather than just a chemistry thing, that’s something that a lot of people come to me afterwards and say I had no idea. But then there’s a lot of people who think it’s ridiculous that I’m even teaching that topic. Just knowing that if you can’t figure out any equations, as long as you’re following your units that’s going to get you to the answer. I guess the other way works better: even if you’re following the equation, if your units don’t follow, you know something’s up.

If you weren’t a professor what would you be doing?
I’d probably be doing research. I still do a little bit of a research. There’s a company in London called Trojan Technologies and they do water treatment. I still keep a little bit of a hand in my research there. So I think if I wasn’t here, I’d be with them. I do really like research, but teaching is special in its own way. It’s almost more rewarding to me. Because you see those students come through and you know that they’re going to do something great.

Interviews are around the corner. Any tips for engineering students?
Every job I ever got, I think I got based on a connection with the interviewer more so than technical skills. I think the biggest thing is that an employer can train you to do their technical work but they can’t train you to work well with others. That’s a personality thing. So I think being there and being somebody who seems like they’d be easy to work with and somebody that you can talk to and developing that relationship with an interviewer. Rather than concentrating on “I know how to do this and this and this”, say “I can do teamwork, I’m willing to learn”. For sure I can do whatever you ask me to do. I can figure that out. But even if I don’t know it, that type of positive attitude I think comes through more in an interview. I think that more employers are looking for that than technical ability. Especially in co-op where most people have the same or similar background.

3 tips for undergrad?
Enjoy it. Definitely enjoy every minute of it. It often feels like a race, you’re racing to the end. You got to get through these courses this semester and then you’re going to do this. When I look back on it, the friendships that I made, the times that I had were definitely some of my favourite times and my favourite memories. So make those memories and make those connections with people.
The other thing is developing an ability to learn. Rather than looking at it and saying I have to get these concepts for this exam. But more so looking at it and saying I know that I can figure this stuff out. If I’m approached with this I can open a book and do research. It’s not just memorizing the formulas. Understanding the types of concepts and how you get to an answer is more important than remembering a particular formula. Even in numerical methods where we have a lot of formulas. To me I’m always looking at my exams and grading them that way, do you understand what’s behind this rather than plug numbers into a formula. I think that ability to learn, that ability to figure things out is the benefit of being an engineer, more so than knowing how to plug things into a calculator.

Favourite memory of undergrad?
I have a wonderful group of friends that I’m very close with and went through undergrad with. Even though we’re from Montreal, Calgary, Northern Ontario, and Southern Ontario, we still make time to get together. I remember my best friend and I would say we’re done studying and go out to a bar, listen to some music. All of a sudden, we’d be asking the waitress for a pen and sheet of paper. Because we were still trying to figure that stuff out even though we promised to stop. Sitting at the table in the middle of the bar and writing out equations and studying together, maybe not doing the best studying but sometimes you just can’t turn that off.

Tell me a little bit more about your research with water treatment.
The company that I’ve been doing research for the last 4 or 5 years, they do UV treatment of waste water to purify waste water. But that’s a well-established treatment method. So they have a whole team of people working on that, trying to optimize it. What I do research on is how to take that technology and apply it to biopharmaceuticals. Using the UV lamps to destroy viruses but not destroy the nutrients that are in some sort of raw material. We want to get rid of the viruses but keep the proteins. So it’s taking that water treatment technology and applying it to biopharmeceuticals.

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