Teaching
I have an extensive teaching experience at both the
undergraduate and graduate levels. This includes teaching in
the US as an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the
Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University
and as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Physics,
Washington State University, and a Visiting Scientist in the
Department of Physics, State University of New York at Buffalo.
I have taught over 20 different courses in physics at both the
undergraduate and graduate levels. The courses for which
on-line materials are available, are highlighted and underlined)
Undergraduate Courses:
Graduate Courses:
Teaching Philosophy and Ideas:
- I really enjoy teaching at all levels, from freshman to
advanced graduate. I consider teaching as an important part of
science, which on one hand disseminates knowledge and promotes
the science itself, and on the other hand allows one to involve
students in current research, further enhancing its results.
Based on the student's evaluations, my performances have scored
better than average, from good to outstanding. As an innovation,
I have substantially incorporated computer assisted and
on-line methods in my teaching. Besides a classroom
teaching, I have been an advisor to many undergraduate and
graduate students and postdoctoral associates. A considerable
and enjoyable part of my research has been done in close
collaboration with students. Presently I am an advisor of three
Ph.D. students and a MS student. Previously, I had been an
advisor for seven Master's theses and seven Ph.D. dissertations,
all of them successfully defended. The most recent of these
Ph.D. dissertations has been defended in 2001 by my graduate
student Sergey Faleev who is now at Sandia National
Laboratories, Livermore, CA.
- I feel that my teaching has been successful due to a few
principles consistently adhered to and due to a substantial use
of modern computer based approaches. Among those principles are:
considering teaching as a privilege, not a burden, thorough
preparation for classes, formulation of problems which are
realistic and of as much practical use as possible, and which
are closely related to the current material to serve also as
illustrations, and last but not least, being accessible to
students.
- I have always actively involved my students, both
undergraduate and graduate, in my research. As my List
of
References witnesses, a number of my papers [6, 9, 11-13,
16-18, 21-25, 28-36, 38, 39, 43-45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 56, 58, 64,
67-72, 74-80, 82, 83, 87, 94, 96, 99, 102-106, 108] have been
published in collaboration with my students.
- I use also some other ideas to make teaching more efficient:
- Teaching in the classroom without constantly consulting
notes (I have the notes thoroughly prepared, but use them just
a few times during a lecture). This makes teaching more
difficult and may generate some mistakes but has two great
advantages. Students witness obtaining all results from
scratch before their eyes and become familiar with the
techniques of calculations, derivations, tests, and recovery
from mistakes.
- As examples, I always take subjects that are of practical
importance, commonly interesting to students. For instance,
teaching classical mechanics, I consider such examples as the
stability of a car during difficult cornering, how to drive
safely with the maximum speed, and what is the mechanical
basis of skiing. In teaching thermodynamics, I discuss how the
Joule-Thomson process is used in SCUBA, why Russian armor
during World War II was superior to German and how it is
related to the method of liquefaction and separation of gases
suggested by the famous Piotr Kapitsa, a Nobelist, why laser
light can serve as the Maxwell's demon without contradiction
to the second law of thermodynamics, whether there is any
resolution of the Gibbs paradox, etc. In the course of quantum
mechanics, I consider such examples as quantum cryptography
(measurability and uncertainty relations), measurements and
localization of particles, the failure of common-sense
predictions in photon interference (Bell inequalities), and
the Aharonov-Bohm effect, etc.
- I always give students more credit for their consistent
work during the semester than for examinations. With this, I
emphasize the priority of diligent, everyday work.
- A new idea mentioned above is the incorporation
of interactive computer assisted methods into teaching.
I have a computer on my desk during the lectures, with its
display shown on the big screen. In the case of Introductory
Physics course, I have all my lectures, including text,
figures, and simulations as computer files, available on
Internet. Each such file has a hyperlinked structure, so one
can easily go to any important part of the lecture or activate
an embedded simulation or demonstration object by simply
clicking the corresponding field. These lectures are available
to my students via Internet. In my experience,
such approach makes a tremendous difference for the
efficiency of teaching. For graduate courses, many
materials are also available to the students during the
lectures and through the Internet. In this case a stronger
emphasis is on modeling packages (usually written in Mathematica)
and embedded into assignment and solution files. There are
links to such materials from the List of
Courses above.
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