Niladri Patra Teaching Statement

I am driven to pursue a career in academia because it will allow me to perform scientific

research and to train students in sciences.

A teacher can make a big difference in shaping students’ life by fostering their
creativity, imagination, skills and developing character. Teachers provide students with
the skills they need to succeed in their future life and make important contributions to
the society. An excellent teacher always inspires the students to make great
impression both inside and outside of the classroom. To me the success of teaching
relies on enabling students to think independently.

I have been engaged in teaching since my first year as a graduate student both as a teaching
assistant in the classroom environment and as a research mentor. I believe that instruction at
both undergraduate and graduate levels should be designed to provide deep and coherent
knowledge and to develop critical thinking skills in students. I often ask myself how I can
improve my own critical thinking skills to be a more effective researcher and how I can help
others to better understand the concepts and use them constructively. My experience tells me
that these skills can be developed by providing an environment that encourages one to
imagine, to try things out, to pull apart some building blocks (equations, particles, etc.) and
put them back together, to question and to discuss. I believe that such environment will
benefit talented students who will continue their career paths in science, as well as non-major
students who will be able to translate the approaches to their fields of study. One should also
keep in mind that students have different learning abilities, cultural backgrounds and
fundamental knowledge may vary greatly. It is teachers' responsibilities to help them
overcome these learning obstacles.

I think that it is most important to learn from the basics and try to relate the underlying
laws of physics and chemistry in various fields, which will help the students to
understand the physical phenomena rather than memorizing it as information. As a
teacher my aim will be not to provide some information in the class, rather it will be an
interactive learning where students will participate to identify a problem and try to
think a possible solution and also establish their thoughts through critical scientific
arguments.

In my teaching, I will combine the instructional material with hands-on examples that
emphasize the discovery. The tools of my research, powerful computation and visualization
software packages, can be particularly helpful in the development of the hands-on class
materials at all the levels of instruction; in fact, molecular modeling tools are now often
compared to a “computational microscope.” The attractive visualization aspect of particle
simulations can be very useful to present concepts to students in a form that can be easily
and intuitively grasped. Let me give an example that often came up in my mentoring. In
introductory physical chemistry classes, screening of electrostatic interactions in ionic
solutions is often presented with mathematical equations. This mathematical approach, when
unaccompanied by an intuitive physical approach, has often posed a barrier to understanding
for many of the undergraduate students that I mentored. Sometimes even excellent students
were more comfortable to hide behind the equations. However, examining even a short
simulation of ionic solution, where one can inspect the behavior of every particle in detail and
track its evolution in time clarified much confusion. The mathematical description of screening
comes out with the help of a simple averaging program. I noticed consistently that hands-on
examples lead students to trust their intuition, gain confidence to question their expectations,
and make predictions on system behavior. The interactive visual display gives students the
material for thinking and questioning.

My course materials will be designed in such a way that students should be able to find the
link between various phenomena and build a unified understanding rather than collecting
discrete knowledge. Whenever possible I want to give an overview of the background history
of any major discovery in experimental or theoretical chemistry/physics and keep up to date
about new research findings in science. While preparing a course work I will keep few things
in mind (i) what the student will learn at the end of the course (ii) proper sequencing of
objectives to make sure that each one builds off another (iii) address each objective in a
reasonable time frame (iv) output from the students to check their understanding.

I would like to teach general chemistry for undergraduate, physical chemistry

(thermodynamics and statistics, quantum chemistry and spectroscopy) for graduate students.
Apart from the fundamental courses, I would particularly like to teach graduate and upper-
level undergraduate classes in the area of my research specialty, namely theoretical and
computational (bio)chemistry, biophysics and nanoscience.

I believe that the success of teaching does not depend only on individuals’ effort. To give the
students a bigger picture, I will keep myself aware about what other teachers are teaching
and learn about their courses materials so that the bridging between different courses can be
smooth.

I have always admired those school teachers and university professors who excelled at
conveying their knowledge unto me. Now that I am equipped with the knowledge of
fundamental chemistry and research experience at the frontier of physical chemistry as well
as computational chemistry, I am eager for a teaching opportunity to share what I have
learned. I am very excited to broaden student interest in science and to mentor a new
generation of scientists and professionals.