{"id":161462,"date":"2025-04-03T10:20:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T14:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=161462"},"modified":"2025-04-03T11:32:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:32:06","slug":"the-best-of-both-worlds-professor-ed-solovey-brings-hands-on-industry-know-how-to-teaching-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/04\/03\/the-best-of-both-worlds-professor-ed-solovey-brings-hands-on-industry-know-how-to-teaching-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best of Both Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Ed Solovey Brings Hands-On Industry Know-How to Teaching Engineering<\/h2>\n

by A.J. Kleber<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Professor
Professor Ed Solovey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The well-worn and rather mean-spirited cliche claims \u201cthose that can\u2019t do, teach;\u201d implying that education is a lesser role in any given field, hardly a step above failure. In addition to the inherent fallacy of the sentiment, this is a good example of the way age-old wisdom can be lost in translation; the original observation, attributed to Greek philosopher Aristotle, is closer to \u201cthose that can, do; those that understand, teach.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Associate Professor of the Practice Ed Solovey<\/a> more than lives up to the spirit of the original. In fact, to cite a more contemporary aphorism: get you an engineer who can do <\/span>both<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Solovey joined Boston University\u2019s department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in September, he entered the classroom with 20 years of hands-on industry experience under his belt. Solovey has worked as a software engineer for household names like Google, Adobe, and Twitter (prior to its rebranding as X); he is also a Founding Engineer at Digits<\/a>, a financial technology company started in 2018 to help simplify finance for small businesses. While he finds his engineering work engaging, he ultimately found himself wanting to do more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mentorship had always been part of Solovey\u2019s work; in particular, the non-traditional, non-hierarchical management structure at Digits has given him several years of experience in cross-team \u201ccoaching.\u201d Teaching would seem to be a natural next step.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I sat down to chat with him about his experience straddling the industry-academic divide, he was wrapping up his first semester as a Professor of the Practice, all smiles and enthusiasm for his work here at BU. As far as he\u2019s concerned, it\u2019s \u201cthe best of both worlds,\u201d providing a good balance of technical work (via class prep, etc), and working with students.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Professor
Professor Ed Solovey teaches an interactive lesson about binary search trees.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Professor Solovey\u2019s pedagogy centers on a method he calls \u201cThink, Pair, Share.\u201d Following a 15-minute lecture, he poses a problem or question for students. The students have 1-2 minutes to just <\/span>think<\/span><\/i> about the problem, 1-2 minutes to discuss in <\/span>pairs<\/span><\/i>, and 1-2 minutes to <\/span>share<\/span><\/i> their conclusions or ideas with the class, on a voluntary basis. Then, the lecture resumes, building on those ideas. It\u2019s a simple structure, but one which provides consistent opportunities for students to engage closely with the material and one another.<\/span><\/p>\n

This collaborative, hands-on approach to learning continues in Solovey\u2019s homework assignments, which is based on GitHub coding assignments inspired by real work scenarios.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked for some of the highlights of his experience so far, Solovey shared the sense of accomplishment that came when his students began to open up and take part in the \u201csharing\u201d part of his lessons after a few weeks of class, as well as one student\u2019s interesting implementation choice during a GitHub homework assignment, which seemed to unexpectedly anticipate the direction of future assignments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Solovey\u2019s Fall 2024 course was 400-level, composed of a small group of mostly-seniors. This semester, he\u2019s wading into one of the large core courses in the ECE curriculum, Introduction to Software Engineering, with up to 100 freshmen and sophomores. His challenge now is to modify and scale up his methodology; one which he\u2019s tackling with all of his enthusiasm and flexibility.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Ed Solovey brings hands-on industry know-how to teaching software engineering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18241,"featured_media":161458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,977,907],"tags":[1324,1322,1207,1323,1204],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161462"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161480,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161462\/revisions\/161480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}