Patrick Sours, Senior Lecturer at The Ohio State University Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering (FABE), received the Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Lecturer last month and was honored at the university's awards and recognition ceremony.
The Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Lecturer annually recognizes a maximum of six lecturers or other associated faculty for their teaching excellence. Honorees are inducted into Ohio State's Academy of Teaching and recognized with an honorarium made possible by the Office of Academic Affairs. The honorees were notified of their awards through surprise announcements led by senior university leaders.
"I am humbled and honored to have received this award", said Sours. "My hope working within the Engineering for Sustainable Development domain here at OSU has been to create an exciting, engaging, and inclusive classroom for our students and this award has served as a reminder that our sustained efforts are hopefully being felt by the students."
In FABE, he teaches Global Capstone I and II, Sustainable WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) for Rural Communities, Introduction to Humanitarian Engineering, and Projects in Humanitarian Engineering, and aims to create educational environments where students can learn how their technical skillsets can have a positive impact on the world.
"My courses challenge students used to problem-solving approaches traditional to engineering to address problems in an unfamiliar way and from new perspectives drawn from interdisciplinary measures, said Sours. "I want students to realize that real-world projects cannot be easily condensed into an equation and that all variables are rarely ever provided."
Patrick Sours earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering with a minor in Humanitarian Engineering and the Global Option Distinction from at The Ohio State University. Patrick then obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, where his MS research focused on codesign with rural communities on the construction and optimization of water storage and his Ph.D. / research efforts focus on the impacts of Humanitarian Engineering with an emphasis on Engineering Education and the development of intercultural competency skills.