(4cy) Addressing Challenges of Chemical Engineering Education in a Virtual Learning Environment

Building on my teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, I am confident in my ability to provide an effective teaching environment regardless of the circumstances. The experience also strengthened my commitment to pursue a career in chemical engineering education. Using modern teaching techniques and statistical methods to evaluate effectiveness of new methods and technologies, I hope to become an engineering educator that fosters an environment of inclusivity, openness, and understanding. I will put emphasis on supporting students’ mental health, create open dialogues in which students feel safe to express themselves and learn, and promote a culture in which any and all students can thrive in chemical engineering.

Teaching Experience:

During graduate school, I have actively pursued teaching experiences that have enriched my pedagogical perspectives, including serving as a teaching assistant and a Fraser and Shirly Russel Teaching Fellow. I first prepared course lectures as a teaching assistant in both graduate-level chemical engineering thermodynamics and biomaterials for drug and gene delivery. These experiences were valuable in learning how to develop assignments (based on the given lectures) and exam questions (in the form of practice exams) for subjects in which I had little prior experience. My time as a teaching assistant for the biomaterials for drug and gene delivery class was especially informative, as I worked closely with the class’s main lecturer to engage the students as we transitioned to a virtual learning environment, adding a “question of the day” component to facilitate conversation on Zoom and encouraging all of the students to participate in discussions on advanced research in the field of biomaterials.

As a Fraser and Shirley Russel Teaching Fellow, I served as a co-instructor for Thermodynamics II alongside two experienced lecturers. As part of the fellowship, I gave 11 of the 26 lectures in an all-virtual classroom, forcing me to explore creative ways to engage the students in the remote teaching environment. The first was a series of “Thermo Bites,” five-minute review lectures on material with which I noticed a number of students struggling. The second was the incorporation of mid-lecture problems to break up lecture into more active segments. This also allowed for reinforcement of concepts and provided additional practice for the students. Third, I asked frequent questions, encouraging a wide range of students to participate and engage with the material, leading them along the path toward the solution to reinforce the material and help make connections. I believe this and the mid-lecture problems also helped the students feel more social in the virtual setting. Fourth, I strongly advocated for and encouraged the use of the mental health resources on campus. I shared instances in which I had used the resources myself and attempted to destigmatize the use of mental health resources for students. Undergraduate life is already difficult without a pandemic, so I felt emphasizing the use of these resources and connecting students to them when desired was crucial in aiding them during this difficult time. Fortunately, I’ve participated in EmPOWER, an empathic peer support group at the University of Delaware, and its many seminars and training sessions to provide support, which were incredibly helpful in these conversations and in facilitating the building of psychological safety in a difficult time for many of the students.

Teaching Interests and Research Interests:

My future teaching interests primarily lie in undergraduate education, particularly for earlier classes in the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum such as introduction to chemical engineering, thermodynamics, and mass/energy balances. The courses, mentorship, and guidance for students in the first two years of college are critical for subject interest and choice of educational path, which I feel I would be able to positively affect¹. I would also be interested in engaging the students in a variety of ways including in-class examples, active learning, demonstrations, and short projects,^{2, 3} and utilizing feedback mechanisms and statistical analyses to determine effective methods of pedagogy on their learning and performance. Some of these methods will be adapted from lessons learned during my experience teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the mini-review lectures on material with which students struggled, allowing them to review material on-demand. There are also a number of ways in which chemical engineering can appeal to and retain students of diverse backgrounds including facilitating opportunities in undergraduate research, introducing real applications to in-class concepts, and creating inclusive cultures and environments in first-year classes in particular,^{4, 5} which would be a focus of my education-related research as well.

Research Experience:

My graduate research experience has focused on the development of novel inhalable therapeutics, which has proved a timely topic during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pulmonary drug delivery offers many advantages for the dosage of therapeutics because of the ability to deliver cargo locally and systemically with a method that generally has high bioavailability of delivered therapeutics.⁶ In particular, nanomedical approaches to pulmonary drug delivery using biomaterials have risen in prominence because of the ability to have ready cellular internalization of nanomaterials and high loading capacity of therapeutic cargo⁷. Though rarely used for pulmonary applications, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have recently been explored as materials for drug delivery because of their high porosity, variable chemistry in their organic linkers and metal clusters, and tunable physiochemical properties.⁸ In my PhD, I explored the use of UiO-66, a zirconium-based MOF, as a pulmonary drug delivery vehicle. We determined that the aerodynamic properties of UiO-66 lend to characteristics leading to efficient aerosol delivery and that they are biocompatible both in vitro and in vivo. The UiO-66 nanoparticles also remained localized to the lung when delivered orotracheally to mice. Lastly, we demonstrated that UiO-66 can successfully be loaded with cargo that is selectively released in environments mimicking intracellular pH. These results collectively demonstrate that MOFs, UiO-66 in particular, have great potential as pulmonary drug delivery vehicles with high loading capacity, advantageous aerodynamic properties, and desirable stability until internalized. Future work will explore other properties and uses relevant in biomedicine including particle size and immune system stimulation.⁹

1. Geri, S., The Effects of Formal Mentoring on the Retention Rates for First-Year, Low Achieving Students. Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation 2005, 28 (4), 853-873.
2. Lima, R. M.; Andersson, P. H.; Saalman, E., Active Learning in Engineering Education: a (re)introduction. European Journal of Engineering Education 2017, 42 (1), 1-4.
3. Felder, R.; Woods, D.; Stice, J.; Rugarcia, A., The Future Of Engineering Education Ii. Teaching Methods That Work. Chemical Engineering Education 2000, 34.
4. Davis, C.-S. G.; Finelli, C. J., Diversity and retention in engineering. 2007.
5. Paguyo, C.; Atadero, R.; Rambo-Hernandez, K.; Francis, J., Creating inclusive environments in first year engineering classes to support student retention and learning. ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2015.
6. Paranjpe, M.; Müller-Goymann, C. C., Nanoparticle-mediated pulmonary drug delivery: a review. International journal of molecular sciences 2014, 15 (4), 5852-5873.
7. Xiang, Q.-y.; Wang, M.-t.; Chen, F.; Gong, T.; Jian, Y.-l.; Zhang, Z.-r.; Huang, Y., Lung-targeting delivery of dexamethasone acetate loaded solid lipid nanoparticles. Archives of Pharmacal Research 2007, 30 (4), 519-525.
8. Cai, W.; Chu, C. C.; Liu, G.; Wáng, Y. X. J., Metal–organic framework‐based nanomedicine platforms for drug delivery and molecular imaging. Small 2015, 11 (37), 4806-4822.
9. Jarai, B. M.; Stillman, Z.; Attia, L.; Decker, G. E.; Bloch, E. D.; Fromen, C. A., Evaluating UiO-66 Metal–Organic Framework Nanoparticles as Acid-Sensitive Carriers for Pulmonary Drug Delivery Applications. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2020.