Velay
Research Group
Teaching
Excellent teaching is key for the future of society, engineering and science. I have always thought that teaching is one of the greatest privileges that a person can have in her/his professional life.
I have the honor to teach "CE 331 Engineering materials II" during spring semesters and "CE530 Properties and production of concrete" during the fall semester.
These are some comments from the blind evaluation from the students:
- "This woman deserves an award. During my whole three years at purdue, I've never met anyone who can teach so well. Great enthusiasm, offering help for anyone that doesn't understand, amazing exercises during class."
- "She is an absolutely fantastic teacher. The way she employs the use of in-class exercises are effective tools to learn the material. I am generally pleased with the way she teaches and would love to take another class taught by her."
- "Really fun and interesting class overall Professor Velay is a phenomenal professor. She is very passionate about her subject, which shows in her notes and lectures. She knows a lot about materials and always has a good attitude in class. Keep up the good work!"
- "Professor Mirian was an amazing professor, she did her best to ensure we understood material and she gave us class exercises that were extremely helpful for exams and studying. I would love to take many more classes from her."
- "I loved your enthusiam for this class, espeically for the concrete segment. I also appreciated the way you broke down new concepts for the class. You started very simple so that we could first grasp the concepts then you elaborated on those concepts to show us the more complicated sides. Then afterwards, you went out of your way to show the applications of what we were learning about. This spiked my interest in the subjects at hand. Thank you!"
- "Her style of presenting is really effective."
CE331-Civil engineering materials II
Course Description
Core course of Civil Engineering - Undergraduate (Purdue University).
A continuation of CE 231 but with an increased emphasis on engineering applications of civil engineering materials such as Portland cement concrete, bituminous materials/asphalt cement concrete, polymers, composites, and wood. In addition, hands-on laboratory experiments are emphasized in this course.
Course Objectives
The objective of this course is that by the end of the semester students will be able to successfully assess the performance of civil engineering materials. This course builds on the use of fundamental material science and solid mechanics concepts developed in CE 231 to understand, explain, characterize, and predict the performance of civil engineering materials. The student will be able to describe the behavior of particulate materials, soils, Portland cement and Portland cement concrete, asphalt and bituminous concrete, wood, and composite materials. The students will be able to describe the behavior of these materials based on fundamental material science and will link this understanding with state-of-the art/practice testing, design, and analysis procedures. The student will achieve these objectives through laboratory and homework exercises that enable them to successfully implement, analyze, and report on laboratory testing procedures. CE 231 and CE 270 are prerequisites.
CE530 Properties and production of concrete
Course Description
CE530 is a graduate course of Civil Engineering (Purdue University). Concrete is used most widely in the construction industry. CE530 is a course about properties and production of concrete. The main topics covered in this course are:
- Introduction to concrete: Aggregates, cement and water.
- Supplementary cementitious materials and additives
- Mechanical properties of concrete (fresh properties and hardened properties)
- Curing: the importance of temperature and humidity
- Introduction of Non-destructive concrete
- Maturity method
- Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity and Rebound hammer
- Introduction to durability of concrete
- Introduction to Special concretes
- Introduction to mixture proportioning
- Mixture proportion of special concretes
- Concrete production
- Quality control
- Concrete and sustainability
- Future of concrete.
Course Objectives and outcomes
(i) Learn the course's topics (see "Topics"), acquiring a general vision of one of the most important construction materials in civil engineering: Concrete.
(ii) An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.
(iii) An ability to identify, formulate and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
(iv) An ability to find autonomously the right sources to learn more about a topic, summarize and analyze the current information, discuss the current knowledge and find the gaps.