Creative Teaching Methods

Abstract: Undergraduates educated in Optics go on to many types of careers. As the applications continue to grow, schools offering undergraduate degrees in Optics face the challenge of sorting out the most relevant experiences to provide during those particular four years. This talk will discuss how the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, which has been teaching undergraduates since 1929, is currently revising its undergraduate program to address the needs of today's college students and tomorrow's workforce. One theme: think about the lab sequence first. Another: maybe one type of degree isn't enough.

Biography: Bahaa E. A. Saleh is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University . He served as Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University in 1994-2007.  He is Deputy Director of the NSF Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems, an NSF Engineering Research Center . He is also co-director of the Quantum Imaging Laboratory and a member of the Boston University Photonics Center .  He received the Ph.D. degree from the Johns Hopkins University and held faculty and research positions at the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, Max Planck Institute in Germany, the University of California-Berkeley, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Columbia University, the University of Vienna, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a faculty member from 1977 to 1994 and served as Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1990 to 1994.   In January 2009, he will become Dean of the College of Optics and Photonics and Director of CREOL at the University of Central Florida.

Saleh's research contributions cover a broad spectrum of topics in optics and photonics including statistical, nonlinear, and quantum optics, photodetectors, and subsurface imaging. He is the author of two books, Photoelectron Statistics (Springer, 1978) and Fundamentals of Photonics (Wiley, 1991, 2nd edition, 2007, with M. C. Teich), and more than 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals.  He is the founding editor of OSA's Advances in Optics and Photonics (AOP), a new journal of reviews and tutorials.   He served as editor of JOSA - A in 1991-97.   Saleh is Fellow of IEEE, OSA, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and recipient of the 1999 OSA Beller Award for outstanding contributions to optical science and engineering education, the 2004 BACUS award for contributions to photomask technology, the 2006 Kuwait Prize for contributions to optical science, and the OSA 2008 Distinguished Service Award. http://people.bu.edu/besaleh/

Abstract: Undergraduates educated in Optics go on to many types of careers. As the applications continue to grow, schools offering undergraduate degrees in Optics face the challenge of sorting out the most relevant experiences to provide during those particular four years. This talk will discuss how the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, which has been teaching undergraduates since 1929, is currently revising its undergraduate program to address the needs of today's college students and tomorrow's workforce. One theme: think about the lab sequence first. Another: maybe one type of degree isn't enough.

Biography: Andrew Berger is an Associate Professor of Optics and of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Rochester, where he joined the faculty in 2000. His research, appropriately enough, is in the field of biomedical optics, with current emphasis on Raman spectroscopy (of immune cells and bacteria) and near-infrared absorption (for monitoring functional activity in the brain). Dr. Berger holds physics degrees from Yale (B.S., 1991) and MIT (Ph.D., 1998); at the latter, he worked in the G.R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory, developing methods of blood analysis using laser spectroscopy. Prior to arriving at the University of Rochester, Dr. Berger spent two years at the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Center in Irvine, CA, building handheld systems to analyze the chemical content of breast tissue. In 2007, Dr. Berger received the University of Rochester's Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching.

Abstract: Undergraduate students often have difficulty in their first (mandatory!) course on microelectronic and photonic devices.    We will discuss our recent efforts to revise and motivate the first course on solid-state devices for sophomores and juniors in electrical engineering.  The cellular phone and its associated information distribution systems are used to introduce and motivate the study of electronic and photonic devices.  Following this introduction, the core concepts of all semiconductor devices - semiconductor carriers, energy bands, and the pn junction diode - are studied in detail including web-based virtual laboratories.  Armed with a solid understanding of the energy band structure and electrical characteristics of the diode, a student can understand the structure and operation of many semiconductor devices important to technologies of the information age.

Biography: Kent D. Choquette (M'97-F'03) received B.S. degrees in Engineering Physics and Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1984 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 and 1990, respectively. From 1990 to 1992 he held a postdoctoral appointment at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ . He then joined Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, and from 1993 to 2000 was a Principal Member of Technical Staff. He became a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000.  His Photonic Device Research Group is centered around the design, fabrication, characterization, and applications of vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), photonic crystal light sources, nanofabrication technologies, and hybrid integration techniques for photonic devices.

Dr. Choquette has authored more than 200 technical publications and three book chapters, and has presented numerous invited talks and tutorials.  He has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and IEEE Photonic Technology Letters, and as a Guest Editor of IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.  From 2000 to 2002, he was an IEEE/Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) Distinguished Lecturer.  He was awarded the 2008 IEEE/LEOS Engineering Achievement Award.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and a Fellow of SPIE.