Professor Awarded SPE Faculty Innovative Teaching Honor
-
August 03, 2015
Assistant Professor, John Foster, is one of five recipients of the 2015 Petroleum Engineering Faculty Innovative Teaching Award. This is the third year in a row a UT PGE faculty member has received this honor.
The award recognizes excellence in commitment to academic research and student supervision. Foster’s classroom utilizes many technological tools to maximize his students’ learning potential. Fellow faculty and former students nominated Foster for his modernization of the classroom beyond the blackboard.
Utilizing a Wacom Touch Tablet, Foster’s in-class handwritten notes are easily transferred to an accessible PDF file for students to reference as needed. He also produces video and audio lectures for his students. Developing coding is a challenge for students, but since Foster walks his students through the process with real Finite Element Method (FEM) examples his students have excelled.
Online lectures are topically segmented and curated onto a course specific website and YouTube where students can revisit them throughout and semester. Foster also incorporates interactive demonstrations and has created a “reverse classroom” where all of the information can be provided online, outside of scheduled lecture time.
Foster continues to receive high marks on course evaluations and is often noted by students for making a positive impact in their education. Students like senior Ruben Mendoza, frequented his office hours where they receive patient help to better understand their materials.
“I am quite fortunate that Foster took the extra step to share important advice with me, which had a strong impact on my goals,” said Mendoza. “He has certainly had a positive influence on my life.”
Foster began his academic career as an assistant professor at The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2011. He joined the UT PGE faculty roster in August 2014. His research interests include geomechanics and numerical simulation as related to unconventional resources.
UT PGE’s new assistant professor, Zoya Heidari, who starts this fall, is also receiving the Faculty Innovative Teaching Award for her work at Texas A&M.
Foster will be recognized, along with Heidari, at SPE ATCE in Houston on September 28.
