{"id":1084,"date":"2017-07-07T18:41:55","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T18:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2018-02-07T21:57:12","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T21:57:12","slug":"faculty-qa-james-baier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/faculty-qa-james-baier\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty Q&#038;A: James Baier"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1085\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1085\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1085\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/files\/2017\/07\/Visions_FacultyQA_JamesBaier_10JUN16_00001.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"409\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1085\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #333399;font-size: 10pt\">Agriculture professor James Baier<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Agriculture professor James Baier has a knack for turning difficult classroom material into a hands-on educational experience for his students. He was the first member of his family to pursue higher education, receiving his master\u2019s in irrigation and his Ph.D. in agricultural and biosystems engineering.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO TEACH?<\/strong><br \/>\nNot exactly. I started out with a love for research. When I began my Ph.D. studies, I focused on how different treatments could accelerate methane production in landfills. Energy companies wanted to harness the gas to<br \/>\ngenerate electricity. It was extremely messy work; we had to basically create a landfill on-campus to study.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WHAT LESSONS FROM YOUR PROFESSORS <\/strong><strong>HELP YOU IN THE CLASSROOM?<\/strong><br \/>\nOne of the professors who convinced me to go to grad school was Richard Warner. His teaching style was<br \/>\nunconventional. He didn\u2019t just walk up to the board, write some facts down and lecture. He wanted his students to<br \/>\ntake what they knew and apply it to situations \u2013 to see if we could attack real-world problems. I try to take that<br \/>\nsame tack with my upper-division students.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WHAT\u2019S YOUR MOST MEMORABLE <\/strong><strong>CLASSROOM MOMENT?<\/strong><br \/>\nTime. Most of my classes have labs associated with them, and I teach those labs. Each one takes a couple<br \/>\nof hours and all that teaching adds up. That said, I enjoy the labs because that\u2019s where I can see students take what they\u2019ve learned and apply it. We\u2019re working on a graduate program right now \u2013 and it will definitely help to have grad students\u2019 assistance with teaching lab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agriculture professor James Baier has a knack for turning difficult classroom material into a hands-on educational experience for his students. He was the first member of his family to pursue higher education, receiving his master\u2019s in irrigation and his Ph.D. in agricultural and biosystems engineering. DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO TEACH? Not exactly. I started [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-15"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}