Tris Utschig

Associate Director for Learning Sciences, Center for Excellence in Teaching Learning (CETL), Kennesaw State University

Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME), Kennesaw State University

What engaged or excited you most about learning when YOU were a student?

In college, it was using what I was learning in applications or design that excited me most. My favorite course was thermodynamics. We worked problems at the board and discussed them as a class most days, and almost every problem related to real-world scenarios. What I found the most exciting was senior design, where we put together simulations for the elements of a novel nuclear reactor design from scratch. The way I viewed it, I had to wait through a few years of background courses before I was able to do the "cool" stuff like in senior design.