BEHROOZ SATVAT

Dr. Behrooz Satvat joined Northeastern University as a Cooperative Education Faculty and a Senior Lecturer of Chemical Engineering in January of 1996. Prior to joining Northeastern University, he was a senior technical manager at Millipore Corporation, spearheading multi-million-dollar projects. Dr. Satvat has held senior positions in research, engineering, and management both at W. R. Grace and Company, and also at Union Camp Corporation. His research interests include separation technology, biomedical engineering, and process engineering design. Dr. Satvat holds several patents; he has designed numerous processes and has developed many products, which have resulted in increased market share and market leadership for various companies. He is a licensed professional engineer and a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers. Having been a successful executive in industry, he knows what kind of skill level is required to succeed in the workplace and has hence generated inter-disciplinary and multi-perspective programs to lead his students towards successful career paths.

This project, entitled "Value of Web-Enhanced Teaching within a Practice Oriented Education Environment", focuses on how we better prepare students for the lifelong-learning required for a career in a rapidly changing environment. For one of the core Chemical Engineering courses, this project will provide (1) a complete set of web-based self assessment quizzes keyed to course reading assignments and (2) two or three interactive problem exercises where the students are interactively guided sequentially through the reasoning processes to address and learn from problems of the nature found in industrial practice (e.g. all necessary data not initially given, approximate calculations leading to a change in problem solving approach or design, new constraints arising after work on the problem has been underway, etc.).

The Web-based self-assessment material will be developed based on his knowledge of the subject matter and his previous experiences with the course and the associated textbook and course schedule. The standard features of the BlackBoard System and a third-party tool, RespondusBB, will be used to implement the self-assessment quizzes into the web-based format. The interactive problem exercises will be developed based on his industrial experience and a consideration of the departmental learning objectives. These interactive problem exercises will require students to integrate knowledge/skills from other courses as well as the specific course being taken.