UC professor innovates first-year engineering education

Engineers tend to design a product, implement it, test its effectiveness and then start the process over again.

University of Cincinnati associate professor and associate department head of engineering education Gregory Bucks brings that same process to educating future engineers.

Bucks arrived at UC in 2012 in the middle of the semester conversion process. That conversion process allowed him to immediately implement ideas that he had developed through his education and previous teaching experience. He has been continuing that work ever since.

In short, Bucks used the constant loop of designing, implementing and testing to find out how first-year engineering students best learn concepts such as computer programming languages and then adjust UC’s approach to doing so.

What has resulted from this loop is what you see today in the engineering education department. First, students learn from videos and hands-on activities in flipped classrooms. These strategies emerged from processing student feedback and talking with co-op employers to learn how their needs were evolving.

As with all innovation, it is an ongoing and evolving process. Just last year, Bucks helped launch the two new engineering design thinking courses that replaced previous ones. This was done with feedback and information from students, faculty, departments and industry.

Bucks became associate department head of engineering education through several serendipitous events. As he graduated with his bachelor's of science in electrical engineering in 2004, there was a lull in the economy that steered him toward getting his master’s degree at Purdue University. In that program he found his knack for teaching as a teaching assistant. As he was finishing his master’s, Purdue launched the first-of-its-kind Ph.D. program in engineering education, in which he enrolled.

After Purdue, Bucks gained valuable experience as a visiting assistant professor at Ohio Northern University before coming to UC. He has been sold on education ever since.

“Teaching is what I want to do,” said Bucks. “I love engineering but, along the way, I was really getting interested in how people learn. Engineering education is the perfect marriage of those two.”

Bucks’ combination of engineering knowledge, educational curiosity, and innovative processes are now working for the benefit of all first-year UC engineering students.