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Andrew K. Dunn, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Roberta Woods Ray Centennial Fellow in Engineering Biomedical Engineering
UT Austin
Developing students' abilities to think critically is an essential part of teaching in interdisciplinary fields.
It is vital that engineering students understand the fundamentals of their discipline as well as the phenomena of interest so they can be more effective in creating solutions to critical problems. My approach to this challenge is to make students stop and think rather than just learn facts. During lectures I continually pose questions to my students such as "why is this important?" and "what does this equation really mean?" Developing a fundamental understanding of both their own tools and the problem of interest will help them to integrate seemingly disparate areas and come up with creative solutions.
