Helping Engineering Students Invent Their Future
By Siddharth Deliwala
As a teacher, I believe my role should not be bound by the walls of a classroom. In fact, my favorite part of my job is interacting with young people outside of class. That’s why my work never feels like work. Because these interactions are learning experiences for both me and my students.
When I was in high school in Mumbai, I was inspired to learn science because of Bharat Acharya, my science and math teacher. He inspired his students to learn intuitively. That solidified my interest in technology because I was always a tinkerer. I used to take apart things that didn’t work. You tinker because things don’t work, and you’re curious why they don’t work, so you take them apart. You try to reverse-engineer the process.
Engineering is about solving problems, and not just science and math problems. It’s an inventive approach you must take towards yourself and your surroundings.
In 1996 I was hired to direct the electrical engineering labs at Penn, and over the course of my career, I’ve spent most of my time with college students of all years. But I hadn’t anticipated that so much of my time with young people would be spent advising and advocating for them: many freshmen are struggling, not yet used to the rigor of what will probably be the most challenging four years of their academic career. Freshman fall hits nearly everyone hard, and my job isn’t just to observe. I try to make myself proximate to students, asking them to call me by my first name, asking them about their activities and how their other classes are going.
I know firsthand that studying engineering is hard. But I also know that there’s more to solving problems than doing well on exams. A student once asked me, “What’s the point of solving problems whose answers are in the back of the textbook?” She was right. Engineering has to be a creative discipline that sparks curiosity, and that’s what I try to make students learn in my classes.
At least a dozen times a semester, a stressed out student approaches me telling me that they’re having a hard time adjusting to Penn. I do my best to understand their struggle and be their advocate so I can explain to the administration the changes we can make to improve their experience. I’m responsible for making sure that when I become their advocate, I’m fighting for their creativity. Becoming original and staying creative takes a lot of effort. I want my students to be able to think outside the box, because engineers should not just be solving textbook problems. They should be inventing the future.
One of the most exciting parts of my job is working with students on their senior design projects. I love this course because it channels students’ creativity and brings out their passion and determination to solve a problem. These projects start with a mere idea and over two semesters become a physical or software product. Maybe it’s devising a technology that measures heart murmurs or building a software for citizens to vote virtually — these were two of the projects students worked on last year. I try to be their coach, encouraging the team to work together and keep going when they’ve spent days (unsuccessfully) debugging their code or a circuit, cheering them on when the drone rotor finally turns on, pushing them to make their projects more applicable and complex. At the end, they deliver a final demonstration of their product, and it’s hugely satisfying for all of us in the teaching community. The culmination of their two semesters’ worth of work, which begins with just an idea and ends with a final product, is a great moment of joy and pride for me.
More often than not, students’ final projects surprise me with how complex and applicable they are. I am shocked and inspired by how dedicated they are to taking on real issues in the classroom. Indeed, my students force me to reinvent myself from time to time, to keep up with a fascinating field that’s ever-evolving.
Siddharth Deliwala has spent the last 25 years as the Director for Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE) Lab Programs at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an instructor for an introductory ESE class and ESE Senior Design.
