Tevis Jacobs: Infectiously inspiring in the classroom
In his classroom, engineering faculty member Tevis Jacobs is one animated presenter.
He speaks rapidly and enthusiastically while adding diagrams to clear overlays on two screens of slides projected onto the white board. The course is “Mechanical Behavior of Materials,” which examines how things bend and break, down to their atomic structures. Today’s class encompasses the concepts of “work hardening,” “twinning,” and nickel-based super alloys (“You guys know that is my favorite topic,” Jacobs says).
Jacobs joined the faculty of the Swanson School of Engineering in fall 2015, teaching this undergraduate class and another on experimental techniques, and offering one on tribology — the study of friction, wear and lubrication of sliding surfaces — to graduate students.
“I’ve always wanted to understand how the world works,” Jacobs says. “Mechanical engineering and materials science: what I like about them is that they are all around us. We are constantly interacting with objects, seeing how they perform. I like the idea of making them better in the future … but the current goal is (studying) ‘Why did this thing happen in this way?’ “What I love,” he adds, “especially in the classes I’m teaching now: we can answer that.”
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Pitt is seeking course proposals for its Fall 2018 Term. OLLI courses are typically 1x a week for 5 weeks. Each term offers 2 sessions of courses. We seek course proposals in a variety of areas including: literature, history, political science and government, the arts, sciences, languages and more. Most OLLI designed courses are similar to actual college courses (but no tests or grades, abbreviated content, and shortened to run for 5 weeks).