Engineering Goes Platinum
Meanwhile, Mauro Caputi, associate professor of engineering, used to incorporate into his curriculum digital audio effect algorithms that shape the sound of an electric guitar,
and even wrote a related paper for the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) titled "Developing Real-Time Digital Audio Effects for Electric Guitar."
"The course's audio emphasis has now shifted from developing real-time effects to postprocessing digital audio signals, and I no longer play guitar or electric bass in the
course. Times change," he shrugs. But Dr. Caputi adds, "I still do comedic impressions in class as a way to enliven the reading of a term's long definition or the rules of circuit analysis."
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Who knew engineering could be hilarious? Dr. Mauro Caputi has been known to sprinkle his engineering lectures with dialogue borrowed from from the likes of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Abbott and Costello.
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He is intent on bringing humor to his engineering lectures. "I react to certain sounds or
topics or words or student responses, or even the course material. I can be a game show host one moment, or go into a well-used comedy sketch, interject dubbed kung fu movie expressions and gestures, spice up the reading of a long definition by reading it with any one of several accents - BBC British, French, Italian or German." He has also been known to sprinkle his lectures with dialogue from the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Abbott & Costello.
In his newest lecture and lab course, "Designing the Human-Made World," Dr. Caputi concentrates on a multimedia presentation system that goes beyond PowerPoint. He can instantly display text, Web pages, video, Flash animation and audio. Now when a cell phone interrupts class, Dr. Caputi notes, he can, instead of launching into an impression, immediately punch up the actual Three Stooges skit about a ringing telephone. "These clips, used properly, capture and hold students' attention, while they have fun learning
the subject matter," he observes.
Carrol Basanez '01, an avionics engineer with Northrop Grumman Corp., praises Dr.
Caputi's unique teaching style. "More than just making the subject matter more interesting, it creates a much more relaxed environment - for asking and answering questions. Some of his teaching techniques, such as adding humor, were so good that I don't think I'll ever forget those formulas."
Back in the first century, the Roman architect Vitruvius, who created the first engineering
handbook, envisioned the multifaceted engineer/builder. "Neither talent without instruction nor instruction without talent can produce the perfect craftsman," he
wrote. To those requirements, Hofstra's Engineering Department has successfully
added creative thinking - or what Walt Disney termed "imagineering."
