Steve ran into Christina Haden at the 2025 ABET symposium in San Diego two weeks ago. Christina has developed a multi step method of assessing student outcomes using performance indicators that span a period of time across an entire curriculum to gain knowledge of learning growth. She is experimenting with longer times and using her methods to perform longitudinal studies of learning gains. She also talked about how this work has influenced one of her more exciting projects that is focussed on first year engineering residence course she is piloting next term.

You can learn more about Christina here:

https://engineering.lehigh.edu/faculty/christina-viau-haden

Christina’s department website is here:

https://engineering.lehigh.edu/meche

You can find the YouTube video here:
https://youtu.be/pLKtgqSzxR0

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium, a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Steve and Tim ran into Taylor Sparks at the TMS meeting and decided to do a podcast. Taylor is a professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at U. Utah. He is also the host of the long running materials science podcast called "Materialism: A Materials Science Podcast".

You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts at the link below or you can just search for it on any podcast platform:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/materialism-a-materials-science-podcast/id1448663986

You can find out more about Taylor and his research here:
https://profiles.faculty.utah.edu/u0203991
or here:
https://my.eng.utah.edu/~sparks/group.html

You can also find out about many of his excellent educational resources and courses on his YouTube Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@TaylorSparks⁩

You can find the YouTube video of the podcast here:
https://youtu.be/yJJcskRX7cs

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium, a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Tim and Steve were at the TMS meeting in Las Vegas and ran into Professor Jerry Floro from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Virginia. We talk about his efforts to bring active learning into his classes, his work in helping start an undergraduate program at UVa, and lots of other fun things. You can learn more about Jerry and the MS&E department at UVa at the links below:

About Jerry:
https://engineering.virginia.edu/faculty/jerrold-floro

About the MS&E department at UVa:
https://engineering.virginia.edu/department/materials-science-and-engineering

You can find the YouTube video of the podcast here:
https://youtu.be/Wy4FhPOK3SI

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium, a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Steve and Tim were walking through the TMS Annual Meeting Exhibit hall in Las Vegas and stopped to talk to Dr. Adam Hope at the Thermo-Calc booth. Adam is a member of the TMS education committee. He told us how he became a Materials Scientist and what a materials student might want to do if they wanted to get a job at Thermo-Calc.
You can learn more about Thermo-Calc here:
https://thermocalc.com

You can find the YouTube video of the podcast here:
https://youtu.be/yi6PymT_vK4

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium, a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Steve and Tim talk with Chris Gordon, the Director of the Wilson Student Team Projects Center at the U. of Michigan. Chris tells us how the Wilson Center got started and evolved into what it is today. There are 24 competition teams at the Wilson Center and it supports many capstone design projects, our Multidisciplinary Design program, and more. Chris explains why community and safety are at the core of the center and how students and faculty help each other succeed. He also talks about why this kind of engaged learning is a powerful tool for our student to experience.

You can learn more about the Wilson Center here:
https://teamprojects.engin.umich.edu

You can make it here. The Wilson Center celebrates 25 years of student-driven building, learning and growing. Includes a YouTube video with some amazing comments by current students and alumni about their experiences in the Wilson Center.

The bumpy road to greatness. A rough 2024 season sparks frustration—but also leadership and learning—for the Michigan Baja team. Also includes a longer video story.

You can find the YouTube video of the podcast here:
https://youtu.be/aHw1YKvYbIc

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium, a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Tim and Steve talk with Professor Wenhao Sun about the way he is using Chat GPT in his thermodynamics and kinetics classes. Wenhao demonstrates how he teaches students to use Chat GPT as a collaborator to solve much harder problems that are usually given to students. He believes that this lets his students experience the higher levels of Blooms taxonomy and shows how he does this in a live demonstration.

Here is a link to a short video describing Professor Sun's research: https://youtu.be/cO7jEApzKoo?si=IhcLScABV4H29AeA
You can learn more about Professor Sun and his research at this link: https://mse.engin.umich.edu/people/whsun
His research website is here: https://whsunresearch.group/

You can find the YouTube video here:
https://youtu.be/rnw0ZWZc0II

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium (https://java.engin.umich.edu/NAMES24/) a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Tim and Steve talk with Izzy Jaszczak about Michigan Technological University's metal casting course and the major changes the teaching staff has made to increase the course capacity to 60 students. This was a course that she had taken as an undergraduate. Working with Dr. Paul Sanders, Dr. Dale Dewald, and Peter Jaszczak, she updated the lab curriculum to give students more individual hands-on time with equipment. Izzy also talks about the research half of her role helping students, staff, and faculty collect data using scanning electron microscopes.

Here is a link to a Google Slide deck about the changes (PDF is also attached):

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yQDSaQuAsHL5VHnIKnoMJgS6BITqOjybiErm8GpoRFg/edit?usp=sharing

MTU Summer Youth Programs:
https://www.mtu.edu/syp/

MTU MSE Department:

https://www.mtu.edu/materials/

You can find the YouTube video here:
https://youtu.be/J4TGFgU7hqk

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium (https://java.engin.umich.edu/NAMES24/) a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).

Please attend the North American Materials Education Symposium next summer, August 5th - 6th at Georgia Tech. Workshops on August 4th:
https://www.names25.mse.gatech.edu

Tim and Steve talk with Dr. Enze Chen, a Lecturer in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. We talk about Enze's unique approach to teaching, his computational modules and materials informatics. We touch on topics such as teaching Gen Z students, generative AI, and visualization in materials education. Dr. Chen even talks about his sketching course for MS&E students. You can learn more about Enze and peruse some extra resources at his website:
https://enze-chen.github.io/

The materials informatics curriculum is further discussed here:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00640

You can find the YouTube video here:
https://youtu.be/WGJ-n8dy-xk

This episode is sponsored by the North American Materials Education Symposium (https://java.engin.umich.edu/NAMES24/) a gift from Prof. Ron Gibala, and the University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering department (https://mse.engin.umich.edu).