Graduate-level teaching
My graduate-level teaching is focused on fostering students' growth as professionals and broadening their scientific perspectives. In 2007, right after arriving from U. of Illinois, a University with typical 1st or 2nd USNews rankings in both condensed matter physics and materials science, I realized that our department was offering only a limited number of graduate-level courses in condensed matter. To help providing a graduate-level coursework complementary to the strong research efforts that we have at Ƶ, I developed a graduate course “Soft Condensed Matter Physics”. I first taught it as a special topics course Phys 7810 during the Spring 2008 semester and then as a newly introduced graduate course Phys 7430, for which I developed everything needed for introducing the new course number. When teaching it in 2010 and 2013, I covered different complementary sets of Soft Condensed Matter Physics topics. I developed lecture notes, homework/exam assignments, and PowerPoint handouts that have been always posted on the course web pages at least one day before the lecture. I also taught a specialized graduate course on “Physics of Liquid Crystals.” In addition to providing the needed background for our physics graduate students, these graduate-level courses help our department to actively participate in the newly established interdisciplinary Material Science & Engineering (MSE) graduate program, with the first MSE class starting in Fall 2013. These courses are listed among required/recommended .