PhD candidates Jayant Charthad and Steven Bell receive 2015 Centennial Teaching Assistant Award

Electrical engineering students honored for outstanding teaching among TA's in the schools of humanities and sciences, earth sciences, and engineering.

Steven Bell and Jayant Charthad, PhD candidates in electrical engineering, have received the 2015 Centennial Teaching Assistant Award. The Centennial award program recognizes outstanding teaching by TA's in the schools of humanities and sciences, earth sciences, and engineering.

Nominated by faculty, peers and previous students, each will receive a $500 prize and certificate.

Bell is the head TA for ENGR40M, a popular "maker" course. With Mark Horowitz as lead faculty, the course was revamped and taught to a small group of students in spring 2014. By fall quarter, 120 students were enrolled. The current semester has 277 students enrolled, the highest number to date.

Bell worked with Horowitz, his PhD advisor, to create E40M. He created some of the lab assignments and has worked to make all of them more clear and fun for the students. He also manages the lab sessions and creates homework assignments.

Charthad has been a TA for several courses, including EE101B, EE114/214A, 214B, Physics105 and Physics64. He worked with Assistant Professor Amin Arbabian to redesig EE101B's lab. The result was such a success that the course was adjusted to match the lab. Arbabian said, "Jayant's secret sauce is his deep understanding of the technical material, ability to break down complex concepts into smaller pieces and an amazing talent in explaining fundamentals – and most of important of all – true passion for teaching."

Last modified Fri, 19 Jun, 2015 at 8:49