October 1, 2002
"Catch!" calls mechanical engineering professor Dr. Kristin Wood, randomly tossing a small object-a wrench, a tiny model car, a mousetrap, a green plastic windup alien-to each member of his class in turn. "Now. . . tell me what it does."
Wood is a pioneer in project-centered instruction. His colorful classroom presentations full of robots, toys and household items have delighted audiences from kindergarten age through adult. He brings the same hands-on approach to every course he teaches, be his students K-12 youngsters, college undergraduates, doctoral candidates, or public school teachers. This week, he receives the UT College of Engineering's highest teaching award-the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Award for Excellence in Engineering Teaching.
"I had a great undergraduate mentor in college, and I really enjoyed how he affected people's lives," he recalls. "I decided in my junior year that I wanted to do the same."
Wood's pupils don't just watch. They participate: working together on small- group projects. On a given day, they may build something, getting a chance to tinker with real-life gears and wheels in the process. Or they may be asked to draw each other. Each day brings new surprises.
Behind the playfulness is a serious purpose. Wood believes individuals possess different, complementary learning styles, with some being more oriented to theory and others to practical problem-solving. The traditional lecture-and-textbook approach is tilted toward theory, he thinks.
By adding demos and projects, he levels the field for the learn-by-doing types. He then ensures a proper balance of learning strengths by dividing the class into four- or five-person teams he picks himself, based on two standard psychological tests routinely used to advantage in the private sector.
Since joining the UT faculty in 1989, he's been a prime mover for two successful high profile endeavors benefiting teachers and students statewide. In 1992, he became one of three UT educators (along with mechanical engineering professor Dr. Richard Crawford and Dr. Marilyn Fowler, of the College of Natural Sciences) to bring the DTEACh institute for K-12 teachers to campus.
Lodged today within the College of Engineering, DTEACh sponsors a variety of week- and two-week workshops for Texas K-12 teachers who want to strengthen their technology-teaching skills. The teachers form teams to study a problem in an area such as energy or robotics, then carry home the knowledge they gain to their own classrooms. For the past three years, the emphasis has been on building miniature robot cars from Legos, using ROBOLAB software donated by National Instruments.
Kathleen Crowe, who has taken DTEACh three times, calls the program "fabulous."
"The great thing is that you're a student all over again, looking at things through a student's eyes," she says. "Dr. Wood and the others create a very welcoming and accepting learning environment." Crowe, who notes that many elementary school teachers find science and engineering subjects intimidating at first, has implemented projects ranging from robot animals to a burglar-proof lunchbox in her fifth grade classroom at Murchison Elementary School in Pflugerville. (See her website at
http://www1.webramp.net/Crowesclassroom/roboticshomepage.htm)
Within UT's College of Engineering, Wood is a major faculty driving force behind Project PROCEED: an overhaul of the mechanical engineering curriculum transforming engineering teaching from book-oriented to "hands-on, right away." PROCEED (which stands for Project-Centered Engineering Education) links theoretical courses tightly to their corresponding labs. It also stresses problem-solving teamwork among students with complementary learning styles.
Students of all levels appreciate the approach. In Product Development-a graduate course that traces a product's evolution from initial customer demand through production-Wood instructs student pairs to draw each other without lifting pencil from paper or their eyes from each other's faces. He calls the exercise attaching the eye to the hand.
"As product designers, you'll need to be expressive with your drawings, even more than with words," he tells them. At the end of the session, the students pose beside their final "portraits," while Wood critiques. "I see you in there!" he says. By and large, they agree.
Wood's research interests in product design and manufacturing mesh neatly with his classes. He loves to design things: "mechanical objects that do things." He's at home in the shop, fabricating objects of wood, plastic and metal-hands-on skills his students will need and don't necessarily start out with.
"As our society becomes more information-oriented and less tinkering-oriented, we have to provide activities that will replace the tinkering," he says. "We have to give our students a context for the technical knowledge we're imparting to them."
He has a natural screening committee for his demos and activities in his three children, ages 11, 9 and 6.
"I try out almost everything with them, one way or another," he says.
His techniques work: beyond his latest teaching award he has earned numerous honors, including the UT Engineering Foundation Faculty Excellence Award (1998), the Department of Mechanical Engineering Teaching Excellence Award (1999) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Curriculum Innovation Award (2000).
About the Cockrell School of Engineering:
The Cockrell School ranks among the top ten engineering programs in the United States and aspires to move into the top five. With the nation's fourth highest number of faculty members elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the Cockrell School's more than 7,000 students work with many of the world's finest engineering educators and researchers. This environment prepares graduates to become engineering leaders and innovators working for the betterment of society.