Balaji Teaching Statement – Page 1 of 4
Rajagopalan Balaji: Teaching Statement
I love teaching and this was one of the reasons to join CU, leaving my full time position as a research scientist at ColumbiaUniversity. I have a passion for teaching, and I strive for excellence in it. However, not having formal teaching experience prior to joining CU, I had to learn the skills. My teaching has improved over the years butI intend to further strengthen my skills.
At the time of my mid-term review, three years ago, my teaching performance was mixed - with steady and improving performance in some courses and a lot more improvement desirable in others. I was disappointed with the poor FCQ scores but was determined to improve. To this end, I utilized the excellent services of FTEP which included important feedback from class room surveys and video tapes of my lectures. Also, I attended their workshop on pedagogy and use of media in class room in May 2004. All of these helped in strengthening my teaching abilities besides improving my FCQ scores. Since re-appointment my FCQ scores have been in the Bs and above (see Table on page 4). My goal in the coming years is to build on these improvements and to further enhance my effectiveness in teaching at all levels. Below I describe the various courses that I developed and taught at CU and some of my observations about the effectiveness of these courses.
My formal teaching efforts have consisted of a range of activities: teaching existing courses, developing new hydrology, data analysis and hydroclimatology curriculum, that integrates my research activities at the graduate level and also to some extent at the undergraduate level. The central focus of my teaching activities has been on the creation of a contemporary graduate curriculum in Hydrology and Hydroclimatology, where there was a bit of a vacuum when I first arrived at CU.. I have designed a curriculum that involves four new graduate courses: Physical Hydrology, Quantitative Methods, Advanced Data Analysis, and Hydroclimatology. In addition I have contributed to enhancing and modifying existing courses. Also serving on the department’s curriculum committee for over three years I have been actively involved in the undergraduate curriculum, which underwent a major change and has been formally adopted last Fall.
Physical Hydrology
Thisis an introductory graduate course required for all incoming graduate students in hydrology. Students from Environmental Engineering and Geography programs also have shown interest in this course. This deals with the various physical processes of surface water hydrology (i.e., precipitation, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, runoff, snow processes). It also introduces the concept of large-scale climate phenomena such as El Nino that drive regional hydrologic variability. Projects involving identification of climate variability from data and home works provide a good appreciation of the interdisciplinary nature of hydrology. The course also serves as a foundation for students wanting to learn advanced topics in hydrology such as multiscaling, geomorphology etc., taught in a follow up course of 6000 level. This course was taught for the first time in Fall 2002 and again in Fall 2003. Although, a graduate course, for various reasons, this had to be offered as a cross-list with the undergraduate, Engineering Hydrology few times since then. As a result, it was difficult to introduce details of physical processes and other advanced concepts as the undergraduate segment of the class were not prepared, while the graduate part was being diluted and hurting the program. It was difficult to strike a balance between the graduate and undergraduate expectations and needs and it had an impact on the FCQ,
Prof. Vijay Gupta and I have been working on overhauling the Hydrology courses and putting in place a robust sequence of hydrology and hydroclimatology courses covering the undergraduate and graduate needs. As a result of this and the department’s new curriculum, this course, from this academic year on, will not be cross listed, which will help significantly in both the teaching and also maintaining the graduate standard. I will be teaching this in Spring 2007.
Advanced Data Analyses Methods
I developed the Advanced Data Analyses course that exposed students to recent nonlinear data analysis tools for a variety of hydroclimate problems. The students learnt to use a Statistical programming software package called S-plus, and the homeworks and projects involved analyzing large real data sets. I put together this course in a fairly short notice and taught it in Fall 2000, the semester I joined CU. It was attended by a good number of motivated students and faculty and researchers from across campus, NCAR and NOAA laboratories. This was my first formal teaching experience and I learned and enjoyed a lot from it. My FCQs were very good. I taught the same course in Spring 2002, this time too the audience was diverse but a majority of them did not have the necessary pre-requisite background. In order to keep the students interested in the class and maintain a healthy enrollment, I covered a lot of basic statistics and probability topics at the expense of advanced topics. Despite these efforts and positive feedbacks throughout the course, the FCQs did not reflect this, which was disappointing. However, several students have used the techniques learned in the class to their research, and have asked me to serve on their thesis committees. The important lessons I learnt from this were (i) to offer this course at a 6000 level and (2) clarify the pre-requisites (basic probability and statistics).
Quantitative Methods
A lighter version of the above course with the inclusion of numerical methods was developed as Quantitative Methods and taught in Spring 2003. It was difficult to cover all of the topics comprehensively to my dislike and also the students. After a lot of reflection and discussion with colleagues we decided to restrict the Quantitative Methods to basics of probability and statistics with an emphasis on water and environmental engineering problems. In addition, I used the powerful package/language ‘R’ along with my weekly lectures. This revamped version was offered for the first time in Spring 2005. The response was very good and it reflected in the FCQs. The same continued in Spring 2006. Also, I revised the Advanced Data Analysis Techniques into a 6000 level course as a follow up to the introductory QuantitativeMethods and offered it in Fall 2005. Given the background in the introductory course and their computation skills on ‘R’ the students had less difficultyfollowing the advanced methods - this showed in the feedback I received during the class and in the FCQs. After experimenting for several years, I feel that equilibrium has been reached with regards to these two courses. I plan to improve further upon this performance.
Advanced Hydroclimatology
Taking advantage of Dr. Krishna Kanikicharla’s (Visiting Fellow, CIRES and an expert on Asian monsoon) presence, I developed and offered a 6000 level course on Hydroclimatology in spring 2004. This was an extra course load that I voluntarily took up. The course was a combination of formal lectures, expert seminars, paper reviews and critiques and class projects and was jointly taught by Dr. Martyn Clark (CIRES). Formal lectures focused on multivariate data analyses techniques geared specifically for analyzing hydroclimate data. Expert seminars covered the world’s monsoons, modes of climate variability, advances in hydrologic predictions and global warming impacts on hydrologic and water resources variability. The course had a diverse student population was very well received – as seen by the highest FCQs in this course.
Undergraduate Teaching: Hydraulic Engineering and Engineering Hydrology
I have also taught two courses that existed prior to my arrival - (i) a service course called Hydraulic Engineering, which is required of all Civil Engineering undergraduates and, (ii) Engineering Hydrology, which is a cross-listed undergraduate/graduate course described earlier. The Hydraulic Engineering course, being a required one, was well established in terms of contents and I had class materials from my colleagues. All of these helped in making a good start with this course when I taught this for the first time in Fall 2001. Over the years, I modified the course by (i) including material from several sources for the pipe flow and open channel flow topics, (ii) including real life design and laboratory problems and (ii) incorporating a wide range of sample problems in the lectures. These helped the students better appreciate and understand the concepts. Several students were motivated by this course and opted to take the Engineering Hydrology course with me in the subsequent semesters. I have taught this course for five semesters, enjoying it all the time and had a steady performance on the FCQs.
The Engineering Hydrology course, as mentioned earlier, is a cross-listed course where there is some difficulty in meeting the needs of both graduate and undergraduate students. I have tried to introduce some of the advanced topics on large-scale climate variability and processes with good response, but the challenge of cross-listing remains. I look forward to the separate offering of the graduate and undergraduate hydrology courses, starting this Fall.
Much of Hydrology and water resources engineering involves manipulation and analysis of large spatial and temporal data sets. Therefore, in my graduate courses, I use large real life data sets for homework assignments and also to explain the concepts. These rigorous hands-on efforts have had very good results such as (i) class projects of four of the students not my advisees, have resulted in journal publications [48 and, 2, 3 and 7 of Papers in Review], (ii) several students,at least ~10, have used the concepts learned in the courses in their research and journal articles and have requested me to serve on their committees. I find this much more rewarding.
Individual Training and Advising
Apart from formal teaching, I have been an active and enthusiastic participant in the NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program both, at ColumbiaUniversity and also at CU. I advised three undergraduates (Mr. Arun Wahi, Mr. Noah Fox and Ms. Laura Condon) over the last six summers. Results from the work of Mr. Arun Wahi helped in obtaining preliminary results for one of my successful grant proposal to NOAA.. This experience helped him in obtaining a graduate school admission with full assistantship. I have advised/ am advising over 15 graduate students (7 PhD, 8 MS), which often involves teaching in an informal setting and training them to write journal articles effectively. This is demonstrated by the fact that I have had about 2 publications with most of my graduate students. Furthermore, all the students graduated have moved on to successful careers. I have always enjoyed these mentorings and it has been very rewarding.
Summary
I am happy to see my teaching skills improve substantially over the years. However, there is lot more room for improvements. Based on the extensive feedbacks and my own reflection the two areas where I need to further improve are - course organization and hand writing/organization on the board. I plan to compile all of my class notes in electronic format which will address these issues directly. Also, I intend to incorporate lot more web tools and real life examples to make the classes much more enjoyable. I am confident of making these improvements and enhancing my effectiveness as a teacher..
The table below summarizes the courses that I have developed and taught to date. The table lists the percentage of new curriculum that I developed, the semesters during which I taught the course, the enrollment, and basic faculty course questionnaire (FCQ) results.
Course# / Title / Curriculum Developed / Semesters
Taught / Enrollment / FCQ Results
Workload
(out of 9) / Course
Rating / Instructor
Rating
CVEN
3323 / Hydraulic Engineering / 15% / Fall 2001
Fall 2002
Fall 2003
Spr 2004
Fall 2004 / 34
33
21
18
36 / 6.20
5.90
5.90
6.20
5.90 / B-
B-
B
B
B / B-
B
B
B
B+
CVEN
4333/
5333 / Engineering Hydrology / 60% / Spring 2001
Spring 2002
Spring 2005
Spring 2006 / 24
30
15
19 / 5.80
5.50
5.6
5.6 / C-
B-
B-
B- / C-
C+
B+
B-
CVEN
5333 / Physical Hydrology / 100% / Fall 2002
Fall 2003 / 14
13 / 6.20
5.1 / B-
B- / B-
B-
CVEN
5454 / Quantitative Methods / 100% / Spring 2003
Spring 2005
Spring 2005 / 15
14
13 / 6.80
6.5
6.6 / C+
B+
B / C
B+
B
CVEN
5833/
6833 / Advanced Data Analysis Techniques / 100% / Fall 2000
Spring 2002
Fall 2005 / 8
17
10 / 5.8
7.6
6.4 / B+
C+
B+ / A-
C+
B+
CVEN
6833 / Hydroclimatology / 100% / Spring 2004 / 8 / 5.3 / A / A-