Spotlight on Teaching with Dr. Michael Gashler

"His willingness to spend time supporting his students has been indispensable to me in my graduate career." - Luke Godfrey, PhD student

Mike GashlerDr. Michael S. Gashler joined our department in 2012.  Since that time, the ratings that students have given his classes have been among the highest in the department.  Some anonymous student comments have included:

"This class is absolutely the best class I've ever been in.  I thoroughly enjoyed going to this lecture every week."  "Dr. Gashler managed to teach me a whole set of new ideas/concepts/skills that I never imagined I would know."

Dr. Gashler generally shuns PowerPoint-style presentations.  "I don't really trust myself with prepared slides", he joked, "If I used them, I'm afraid I might start letting the slides do the teaching, and that could be a slippery slope.  In place of PowerPoint, he draws figures and diagrams by hand using a light-weight painting program.  But where some quality may be lacking in illustrations, Dr. Gashler compensates by connecting his real-time drawings with the class discussions, illustrating questions and their corresponding solutions.  He captures his lectures and posts them on-line immediately after class.

Dr. Gashler disclaimed some of his success by saying, "I think a lot of the enthusiasm that students have for my classes may derive from the subjects, rather than the teaching.  Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are just really interesting subjects.  I don't see how anyone could study those subjects without thinking they are cool.  These topics are sci-fi enough to make people dream, and just practical enough that we can really code up working programs that do useful things."  Whether it is really due to the subjects or the teaching, that enthusiasm is clearly catching with Dr. Gashler's students.