Teaching Activities

கலாநிதி சன்முகதாசன் சுதாகரன்

Dr Suthaharan developed a strong teaching philosophy and proposed a teaching framework based on his 25 years of experience. The teaching framework is called flexible learning and sequential knowledge update (FLaSKU), and it has been peer-reviewed and published in an ACM conference proceedings. It may be downloaded from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2656464.

Dr Suthaharan's current teaching interests include big data analytics and machine learning, cryptography and network security, and computer networking and analysis. He has demonstrated excellence in teaching through undergraduate and graduate student instructions. He has been nominated by his students for 2002-2003 and 2006-2007 College Teaching Excellence Awards, and 2004-2005 Alumni Teaching Excellence Award at UNCG. He has also been nominated by Department Head for 2013-2014 Alumni Teaching Excellence Award. Dr Suthaharan also received 2002 Advancement in Teaching and Learning Awards from UNCG. In 2010, he jointly received Advancement in Teaching and Learning Awards with Professors Cassidy and Purcell from Art Department.

Dr Suthaharan jointly developed an upper-level undergraduate and graduate course in cryptography and network security with Professor Barry Kurtz from Appalachian State University for the project funded by the University of North Carolina (UNC) Office of the President system, and delivered it to several UNC campuses from UNCG via the NCREN videoconferencing system with Professor Barry Kurtz. He also developed and delivered a graduate course in “Practical Intrusion Analysis” successfully in fall 2011.

In spring 2013, Dr Suthaharan developed and taught a special topic course called “Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning” which involved the setting up of Hadoop distributed file system and its application to solve several big data classification problems (number of students enrolled was 9). He then revised the course and delivered it again in fall 2014, and the number of students enrolled for this course was increased to 26. The course revision and the development of new course materials were funded by NSF CCF-0939370 grant (a sub-award issued by Purdue University to UNCG; the original award was issued to Purdue University by NSF). 

Dr Suthaharan also actively participated in interdisciplinary teaching and research activities. He served as a senior personnel in an NSF funded Math-Bio project and jointly supervised an undergraduate research student with colleagues from Mathematics and Biology Departments at UNCG. Similarly, in spring 2011, he jointly proposed an interdisciplinary undergraduate course called “Art & Code” with Chris Cassidy from Art Department at UNCG and delivered it to both computer science and arts students successfully.