The Best

While a student in elementary school, Dr. Robert Freeman would get his homework done early and then help his struggling classmates with their assignments; today he can be found instructing mechanical engineering students at The University of Texas-Pan American using innovative teaching methods to aid in their knowledge retention.

A son of a mechanical engineering professor at The University of Florida, Freeman, chair and professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, knew he was going to grow up to be an educator because he had found his passion for teaching early.

“From very early on I was helping my classmates with their homework and I was in the (teaching) environment. Then when I was an undergraduate and graduate student I just loved the environment I was in and the research group I was in that I pretty much decided I wanted to teach,” Freeman said.

Even though today Freeman, who earned his degrees – bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. – from The University of Florida in mechanical engineering, can be found spending countless hours on administrative duties as department chair in his third floor office of the Engineering Building, he still considers himself a teacher more than anything else.

“My passion is teaching. The reality for me is the most fun I have is working on materials to use in the classroom and right next to that is actually using them in the classroom to get students to understand the concepts we are trying to teach them,” he said.

Freeman officially took over department chair duties in September after the passing in January 2009 of close colleague and confidante Dr. Hashim S. Mahdi, longtime mechanical engineering chair and faculty member. Since then he has found himself juggling time in the classroom and the office, with his heart still belonging to curriculum innovation and educational research. Freeman, who came to UTPA in 1994 to help in the establishment of a mechanical engineering program, said his ultimate goal as an educator is to get more students, particularly minorities and women, interested in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

His desire to provide the best educational opportunities and instruction for UTPA students earned him in August 2009 what is believed to be among the highest awards in the country for outstanding undergraduate faculty performance and innovation – The University of Texas System’s first Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards.

FIRST-CLASS INNOVATOR

For Freeman, implementing innovative teaching methods in his classes began more than nine years ago with his involvement in the National Science Foundation’s Vanderbilt-Northwestern-Texas-Harvard/MIT Engineering Research Center (VaNTH ERC) on bioengineering educational technologies. Through the VaNTH ERC, Freeman said he implemented Challenge-Based Instruction (CBI), proposed by experts in learning science, versus the traditional lecture-based instruction in some of his courses. In his Introduction to Computational Biomechanics course, Freeman implemented a CBI learning module that deals with the functional anatomy and musculoskeletal mechanics of the human knee, which he described as similar to looking at robotic joints.

“The pedagogical approach in this class is more generally referred to as anchored, inquiry-based instruction. The specific approach taken employs posed challenges that are anchored by leading the student through a sequence of learning activities termed the Legacy Cycle,” he said.

The steps of the Legacy Cycle he said include looking ahead (learning objectives are presented), generating ideas (students work alone and/or in teams to express what concepts or knowledge they think is important for solving the challenge), multiple perspectives (thoughts of various experts about what they think is important are presented to the students), research and revise (reference materials and formative assessment articles are presented to assist the student in exploring the challenge), testing your mettle (summative instructional events are presented), going public (a high stakes motivating activity such as a presentation is undertaken), and reflecting back (the student revisits their initial thoughts concerning the challenge that they expressed in the generate ideas phase).

“Through VaNTH ERC I got hooked on the Challenge-Based Instruction, which is kind of fun because you get to pose the problem first and then you introduce the students to what they need to know to be able to solve the problem. Normally we teach the theory first and then ask questions that can be solved using that theory. With CBI you introduce the question first and the associated theory second. You do things backwards,” he said.

“It is my firm belief that this is a viable and necessary approach to engineering education in this age of emerging and multidisciplinary technology. We simply can’t afford to tell a student interested in complex problems requiring a mixture of knowledge from the sciences and engineering to first go away and take a year of biology followed by a year of chemistry followed by three years of math, physics and engineering and to then come back and we’ll talk. You will have lost that student possibly forever. We need to get them started on the problem right away,” Freeman added.

The VaNTH ERC that brought together professionals in bioengineering, learning science, learning technology and assessment and was devoted to educational technologies that can be used at all levels and fields, provided Freeman and his colleagues with new tools to use to engage and better educate UTPA students he said. The goals of VaNTH ERC were to discover what students should learn, how they should learn it and how learning can best be assessed. These goals remain the goals of Freeman and his colleagues in their efforts to apply this method of instruction here at UTPA.

“The plan is to implement CBI, integrated with many other features of a constructivist learning environment, throughout science, math, and engineering at UTPA and to push for its adoption throughout the STEM educational community at all educational levels,” Freeman added.

IN THE FUTURE

Over the next two years Freeman will continue implementing innovative teaching methods while facilitating the success of Hispanics and low-income students in the STEM fields through the Integrated STEM Pathways Support Initiative for the Rio South Texas Region between UTPA and South Texas College (STC).

The collaboration, which began last year with a two-year $2.4 million Cooperative Arrangement Development Grant from the U.S. Department of Education through the College Cost-Reduction and Accessibility Act, has both institutions working together to increase the number of Hispanic students in the STEM areas.

Freeman will lead the development of CBI curriculum (one of four project activities) using the Legacy Cycle for 10 STEM courses to be taught at both UTPA and STC. The courses will include Calculus I, Calculus II, Physics I, Introduction to Engineering, Statics and Dynamics, Introduction to STEM, Engineering Graphics, Mechanics of Solids, and Measurements and Instrumentation, all in collaboration with other STEM faculty from UTPA and at STC.

“Our hope is that the students will maintain the same level of learning, the same level of knowledge gained, but will be much better adaptive experts,” Freeman said. “I and a lot of other faculty spend a lot of time developing materials for the classes we teach, yet the gains tend to stay within the bounds of those classes and do not transcend to those that follow. There really has to be a systematic and integrated strategy I think to have an overall affect and that is what the STEM Pathways Initiative, at least the CBI part of it is all about.”

SHARING HIS PASSION

Aracely Rocha, a former student of Freeman’s who is working on her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University, said she took her first mechanical engineering course, Kinematics and Dynamics of Machines, a favorite of Freeman’s, with him in the spring 2005 and was impressed and motivated by his dedication to encourage his students to try harder and reach for excellence.

Rocha said when Freeman graded papers and projects, he always pointed out the mistakes but always made suggestions on how the work could be corrected and improved, which she said taught her to critically analyze her own work and organize it better.

“During my junior year I wanted to become an expert in a field like most of my professors but Dr. Freeman, in particular, was in charge of the senior design projects which meant he had to provide input and criticize everyone’s work, whether it was his field or not. And that's why I decided to pursue a Ph.D. to be better prepared and be able to understand and provide ideas to fields outside of mine,” said Rocha, who plans to earn her Ph.D. in May 2011.

In his 14 years as a UTPA mechanical engineering faculty member, he has taught a total of 80 courses, averaging 5.4 a year. In 57 of those courses his composite rating as an instructor has been a 3.77 out of 4.0, which Julie Fife, a UTPA mechanical engineering alumna, said is not surprising.

“Dr. Freeman gives a 100 percent of himself to teaching, both in the classroom and out,” Fife said. “His passion for teaching is exemplified by his commitment to the students. If he can help a student understand, he is willing to take whatever amount of time is necessary for this to happen. He is respectful of the students, encourages them to question everything, and incorporates different teaching styles to reach more students. Because of these things, he is very well-respected by the students.”

Fife, who defended her Ph.D. thesis in April 2009 to receive her Doctor of Philosophy in the field of materials science and engineering in June 2009 from Northwestern University, is currently in Switzerland working as a postdoctoral fellow in the X-ray tomography group of the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institute, a internationally-renowned research institute for the natural and engineering sciences.

“He is definitely one of the best professors I have ever had because of these characteristics, but also because, on a personal level, he gave me the support and encouragement I needed to continue on the path toward higher education. He invested time in me, as did many of the other professors in the mechanical engineering department, which in turn, has had a significant influence on the choices and successes in my life,” Fife said.