Teaching - Rebecca G. Ong

Web Apps

MIC/IC₅₀ Analyzer

Upload your dose-response data and the app will autofit two non-linear models to the data, find the IC₅₀ and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values, and generate a plot containing all the information.

Created for CM3025 - Bioprocessing Laboratory

Access the Web App

Interactive McCabe-Thiele Plot

TBD.

Created for CM3240 - Stagewise Separation Processes

Access the Web App

Teaching Philosophy in Brief

The following beliefs about teaching and learning guide development of all my courses:

Clarity - course organization and delivery can and should be designed to reduce confusion
Repetition - repeating key content and practicing skills improves retention
Engagement - engaging student interest facilitates long-term learning
Empowerment - actively involving students in the classroom and giving students choices and participation in decision making processes improves retention and engagement
Professional Skills - professional skills are as important as core technical skills. I usually integrate at least 2-3 from the following list into each of my courses.
- Creativity
- Communication (written, oral, and interpersonal)
- Collaboration
- Community and Global Awareness
- Ethics
- Data Science/Statistics
Context - professional skills are best learned and retained, and are most likely to eventually be applied, when taught in a disciplinary context

List of Current and Recent Courses

Bioprocessing Laboratory

CM3025 (1 Cr) - Spring Semester

Experience all steps involved in generation of a product using microorganisms. Learn and apply molecular biology and microbial characterization techniques, perform microbial cell culture to generate a product, employ downstream separations for product recovery and purification, and analyze product purity and yield.

Learning Objectives:This course is intended to provide a practical experience using biological approaches to take a product from concept to scale. Following this course, you should be able to:

Employ proper experimental procedures (e.g. pipetting, aseptic techniques, microscopy, microbial cell culture, PCR, gel electrophoresis, fermentation, etc.) and safe work practices in biological experiments.
Follow a defined experimental procedure from start to finish.
Maintain accurate and detailed laboratory records on procedures and results.
Design and carry out an experiment to determine the effect of process variables on product formation.
Analyze, draw conclusions about, and communicate experimental results.

Stagewise Separation Processes

CM3025 (3 Cr) - Fall Semester

This course will relate thermodynamic principles to separation processes. Mass balances, energy balances, and fundamental concepts are applied in selected equilibrium stagewise and rate-based material multiphase separations (distillation, absorption, stripping, extraction, washing, packed bed, membrane-based, and leaching operations).

Learning Objectives:Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Describe equilibrium data using thermodynamic principles.
Analyze problems relating to mass balances, energy balances, multiphase separations, flash distillation, two-component column distillation, azeotrope-based distillation, and batch distillation systems, including the use of short-cut and computer-aided stage-to-stage calculations.
Recognize the principles of separation driving forces and determine the best system to conduct separation operations.
Apply equilibrium distillation-based separation principles to other separation processes, including absorption, stripping, extraction, washing, and leaching operations.
Analyze problems of rate-based separation systems, including packed beds and membrane separation processes.

Alternative Energy Technologies and Processes

CM3979/ENT3979 (1 Cr) - Fall Semester

This course covers a wide range of alternative energy technologies with an emphasis on chemical and biochemical processing. Technologies covered may include solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave/tidal, biofuels, fuel cells, and more.

Learning Objectives:This course is intended to provide a broad overview of alternative energy technologies particularly relevant to chemical engineering. Following this course, you will be able to:

Evaluate and compare conventional and alternative energy technologies.
Identify the data and approach needed to answer relevant energy questions.
Identify the data and approach needed and solve equations to answer relevant energy questions.
Present and interpret results from energy analyses accurately and effectively.

Advanced Transport Phenomena

CM5300 (3 Cr) - Spring Semester

This course covers single- and multi-component mass, energy, and momentum transport, derivation and use of the general transport equations for Newtonian and non-Newtonian flows, convective flows, and mass transport in flowing systems, with applications to complex systems.

Learning Objectives:This graduate level course is intended to expand on topics covered by undergraduate courses on transport phenomena, covering momentum, energy, and mass transfer. Following this course you should be able to:

Utilize vector-tensor mathematics to solve transport problems
Derive equations of change and apply to transport systems.
Solve problems related to complex systems including non-steady state, non-isothermal, turbulent, non-newtonian, and/or multicomponent systems.
Apply transport concepts to solve real-world computational fluid dynamics problems and communicate results