For Professor Stefano Colafranceschi, education is all about collaboration. At EMU, he has enjoyed the smaller class sizes that allow more one-on-one partnership between him and his students. “In small classes, it is easier because I can follow them and understand where they are, and they can give their ideas,” Colafranceschi said. He added, “My role is to walk with them instead of telling them where to go.” These connections between faculty and students, he says, improve overall learning. “When there is a strong relationship and you trust somebody, you learn better,” he said.
New this year to the university, Professor Colafranceschi teaches a variety of engineering and computer science courses in the Mathematical Sciences Department. Colafranceschi was born in Italy and earned his PhD from the University of Rome, Sapienza. Before coming to EMU, his work was primarily in research in the fields of aerospace engineering and nuclear physics. His previous work took him to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He also worked on research alongside a bit of teaching at Florida Institute of Technology.
Colafranceschi is drawn to the big-picture view of engineering. “Sometimes engineering is not about specification, but thinking about what to do in the best possible way,” he said. Though it requires attention to details, it also involves a great deal of creativity and problem-solving. “I ask people, ‘What do you want to invent?’ and they come up with an idea and then we work together and solve the problem together.”
For Colafranceschi a unique benefit of working at EMU is the community that can be found both in and out of the classroom that is harder to find in larger organizations. “I feel like it’s a privilege to be in such an environment where there is this atmosphere of working together,” he said. “[The students] don’t look at me as simply a professor, and I don’t look at them as simply a student.” He has also enjoyed being a part of a dynamic and collaborative group of faculty and staff. “It is enriching my life to have a department that is not just an entity, an excel line in my schedule, but there are people that care about me and I care about them.”
At EMU, Professor Colafranceschi hopes to work on reinventing older- style classes with a new approach that is more relevant to students and create a more dynamic learning environment. In the next few weeks, he, along with a group of EMU students from the department, will be meeting and beginning to collaborate with Colafranceschi’s past employer, CERN, to work on problem-solving and developing ideas for a future supersonic jet plane. Currently, there are engineering problems with the jet that still need to be solved. However, the hope is that with the help of EMU students, progress will be made towards building a working model in the future.
Colafranceschi is hopeful that this will be a worthwhile experience, noting, “If it is not against the laws of physics it is not impossible. It is just a matter of time and we will do it.”
