Mentoring
and Teaching
Dr. Carroll received his PhD. from Dr. Doering at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT. So were did Dr. Doering study?
Dr. Dale Doering studied with Dr. J. Thomas Dickinson (Washington State)
Dr. Dickinson studied with Dr. Jens Zorn (University of Michigan)
Dr. Zorn studied with Dr. Vernon W Hughes (Yale University)
Dr. Hughes studied with Dr. I.I. Rabi (Columbia University, Nobel 1944)
Dr. Rabi studied with Dr. Albert Potter Wills (Columbia University)
Dr. Wills studied with Dr. Arthur Gordon Webster (Clark University, founder of the APS)
Dr. Webster studied with Dr. Hermann von Helmholtz (Berlin)
So I guess you could say we are the great great ---great--- great great grandchildren of Dr. Helmholtz.
(Isn't google amazing!)
And the next generation? There have been more than 100 students and postdocs to spend time in the Carroll Research Group. I will eventually list them all, but for now here are the advanced thesis holders from the group. I am justifiably very proud of them all.
PhD: Daniel Tekleab, Scott Webster, Richard Czerw, Jiwen Liu, Nicole Levi, Faith Coldren, Jerry Kielbasa, Wanyi Nie, Yuan Li, Corey Hewitt, Alex Taylor, Greg Smith, Wenxiao Huang, Junwei Xu, Chaochao Dun, David Montgomery
MA: A. Date, P. Iyer, S. Xing, W. Wang, D. Weston, Jillian Berjke, Eric Peterson, Eric Henderson


The Carroll Doctrine?
Online Education
Is it for you? Or, is there more to this?
80% of [success] is just showing up
-woody allen
Online and hybrid educational models are hotly debated today. Is the traditional college experience worth the expense, the effort, the trouble? There are many that say no, and a raft of research that would suggest that skills - as based on standardized exam performance - are exactly the same in the traditional and online delivery approaches. This is true for STEM as well as liberal arts subjects. BUT...
I would like to posit that this is not necessarily the whole story. It is undeniable that teaching methodologies online have improved dramatically over the past few years and that online courses do now represent an excellent opportunity for those students that can not attend courses in person. It is further undeniable that today's online approaches provide a self-learning space that is beneficial to all students and should be utilized as "good pedagogy" in classrooms that seek to improve a students mind.
However, when looking at outcomes beyond simple exam scores, particularly in STEM areas, interactions with peers, peer learning modes, interactions with mentoring instructors, self-evaluation based on cross pollination of ideas within overlap groups, must play an essential role in education as in life. The singer Jimmy Buffet once said: "Don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it…" or less poetically: the experience counts.
Read This For More on this Hypothesis
So what does this all mean? It means we should be doing both! WFU offers a unique environment for young scientists. You can become part of a vibrant and active professional community of researchers and experience first hand the meaning of everything we are teaching you. And, in my courses, we will also make use of the latest in online resources, to ensure that you have every chance you need to succeed.
Dave Carroll
Carroll Study Guides
Lecture Materials and study guides are available for nearly every course I teach. All the undergraduate courses have them available on their CANVAS pages. Most graduate courses either use one of my text books or one of my study guides. These materials are distributed at the beginning of class.
The Tutorial
In all undergraduate lecture classes I use a tutorial system. In this system each student meets with me, or another senior tutor, weekly for one hour and presents their HW answers, discusses their approach to problems posed in
tutorial, and asks questions about concepts in the class. HW grades are
based on the tutorial.
More info on how this works can be found on the CANVAS
pages for the different classes.
These courses use a tutorial system. There are weekly meetings between one or two students and a tutor to discuss the weekly lectures and address assignments that are given by the tutor in the form of HW and special problems. You must prepare for the tutorial weekly and be ready to explain answers to problems in detail. The tutorial is graded.

These courses are for a Nanoscience and/or Materials Physics curricular emphasis. They are typically taught in seminar form some with labs and at the graduate level.


