Personal Narrative: My Experience Of Mentoring

My experience in teaching has mainly been in the role of teaching assistant for various courses at McGill University. I believe that academic teaching and mentoring is a challenging endeavor. To be effective as a teacher and as an advisor, I will encourage the following skills that I have learned and applied at McGill as a teaching assistant. During my senior graduate years, I took a leadership role in the Expert Systems in Electrical Design (ECSE 549) course, which included the opportunity to mentor and advice graduate students. This course taught students the basic principles involved in designing electricomagnetic devices. It provided an insight into how computers can play a role in the design process. Students were encouraged to explore machine learning and optimization techniques. The course had a group project component and I managed the students in teams of 3-4 members. My approach to mentoring involved providing guidance and positive reinforcement. The attempt was not just to provide the tools, but also to make them independent researchers. Many students later on applied the lessons they had learned in this subject in their research work. I played a similar role in the Software Engineering Practice (ECSE 428) undergraduate course where I managed project teams, each comprising of
Involvement of students in a classroom environment is essential for learning. The key is to connect to the audience by applying examples from everyday real life which they can easily relate to. Visual aids are helpful to achieve such a goal and I tried to include these wherever possible in my lectures and laboratory procedure manuals. In order to be transparent while grading assignments or exams, I always prepared a rubric in consultation with the faculty member and provided it to students beforehand. This ensured that students carried a clear understanding in terms of what was expected from