Faculty Spotlight: Jason Foster
Jason Foster is the Lecturer in Engineering Design Education in the Division of Engineering Science. This long title tells you three things. First, that Jason is a Lecturer. This means that most of his time is spent lecturing in the classroom, running tutorials, or meeting with students outside of class. Second, that Jason’s focus is on engineering design. All of his courses, and the research he does when he’s not teaching, focus on how to help students become better designers and better engineers. Last, that Jason spends most of his time working with students from Engineering Science. While he is active in the broader Faculty, most of the time you can find him in the Bahen Centre working with 1st and 4th year EngSci students.
When he’s not teaching engineering design, Jason can often be found teaching fitness classes at GoodLife. He says that it’s a nice change from the engineering design classroom, because when engineering students are designing they go off in all sorts of interesting and wild directions instead of moving in lockstep like his aerobics participants.
In an effort to better understand his students, Jason has recently been exploring “The Big Bang Theory”, “Bleach”, and “Twilight”. In an effort to help his students better understand him, he has been known to use examples from “Battlestar Galactica”, “Firefly”, the various “Star Trek” series, and XKCD. He hopes that eventually he and his students will come to a mutual understanding of what makes up popular engineering culture.
While he’s hesitant to play either dodgeball or most video games with his students (he claims his reflexes aren’t up to the challenge) he has been known to be up for a game of soccer, foosball, or ultimate frisbee.
