John Thornton Bell

Instructional Activities

STATEMENT OF TEACHING INTERESTS:

I believe that a professor's teaching activities are every bit as important as his or her research efforts. I therefore strive to not only deliver the best possible education to my students, but also to continuously develop new and better methods of training future engineers and to share those new techniques with other engineering educators.

EDUCATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Development of Virtual Reality as an Educational Tool. Under an NSF grant, the applicability of virtual reality as an educational tool is being investigated through the development of modules covering chemical kinetics and reactor design, safety and hazard analysis, thermodynamic relationships, multi-dimensional mathematics, and other topics.

Course Development. Completely revised the first semester senior plant design course to improve the cohesion of the course and increase the relevance of the material covered.

Over 8000 hours of classroom experience in chemical engineering and computer science.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES:

Classes Taught at The University of Michigan:

• ChE 486 - Plant Design and Simulation I:
• 1995: 155 Students. Course revision as described above. Ratings(2) : 3.37, 3.69
• 1994: 150 Students, ( co-taught with Levi Thompson. ) Ratings: 3.07, 2.78
• ChE 344 - Chemical Kinetics and Reaction Engineering:
• 1995: 80 students, ( coordinated with H. Scott Fogler ) Ratings: 4.03, 4.12
• ChE 460 - Unit Operations Laboratory
• 1996: Two sections of 15 students each.
• ChE 490 - Directed Undergraduate Research
• 1994 - 1996: 10 Students. Included C programming and virtual reality training.

Classes Taught at The Computer Classroom, Inc.:

• 1990-1994: 40 Hours lecture per week for 200 weeks.
• Estimated 300 classes, ( 1 to 5 days each ), encompassing 2000 total students.
• Courses taught include Introduction to UNIX, UNIX System Administration, Serial Communications, TCP/IP Network Administration, Shell Programming, C Programming, Computer Maintenance Workshop, and similar topics.

Classes Taught at The University of Wisconsin ( Teaching Assistant ):

• 1985 - 1989: Chemical Plant Design and Simulation, 15 students per section.
• 1990: Computer Training for Chemical Engineers in all ChE courses.