Erdal Oruklu Receives 2020 Board of Trustees Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award
Erdal Oruklu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, was awarded the Board of Trustees Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award as part of Illinois Institute of Technology’s 2020 Excellence in Teaching Awards.
Oruklu’s research is on engineering reconfigurable and resilient computer hardware. He works on building system-on-a-chip architectures that can adapt to run any application, and he designs chip hardware that is secure from external attacks, down to the smallest circuit components.
He taught ECE 100, the introductory electrical and computer engineering course, for seven years starting in 2013. The lab-based course gives students a series of open-ended problems to solve as a team.
“With that mechanism, I think we are teaching them how to be an engineer because when you graduate and join a company, you will be part of a project and you will not have the solution; you have to figure it out as part of a team,” says Oruklu.
Department Chair and Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie says that Oruklu has been an excellent teacher of both undergraduate and graduate courses in the department while also maintaining his own research. Oruklu is the faculty advisor for Eta Kappa Nu and for the Illinois Tech student chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Saniie says Oruklu also played a major role in establishing the department’s cybersecurity programs.
“Oruklu is extremely dedicated to the students and the department,” says Saniie. “He has diligently worked to improve the electrical and computer engineering curriculum and has introduced new innovative courses. His teaching fosters innovation and student engagement. He is an excellent and remarkably popular teacher with our students.”
Oruklu says he enjoys teaching at Illinois Tech because of the wide variety of students he encounters in the classroom, including international students and students with a whole range of professional experience.
“I think we have a very high level of skill set in our student body, and they really amaze me in terms of what they can achieve if we give them the opportunity, and that’s the fun part,” says Oruklu. “When we do open-ended projects, sometimes they actually come up with their own ideas that are much more ambitious than what I was thinking, and that never ceases to surprise me.”
Photo: Erdal Oruklu
