Professor Kaisar Khan BY TRYFON BOUKOUVIDIS Every person has a story. Among the goals of the College of Engineering is to enhance the personal touch element that accompanies McNeese State University since its establishment in 1939. This is why a professor’s story is important for a student to inspire him/her and help him learn more about his/her instructor and the way he/she teaches. In this article, the story of professor Kaisar Khan is unfolded.    

 Joined McNeese on August 2014, professor Khan is among the newest faculty in the College of Engineering and McNeese State University in general.  Dr. Khan found out about McNeese State University by one of his friends, who used to be a faculty member of the university. Before McNeese, Dr. Khan was a tenure track faculty in the State University of New York. He chose to apply to MSU because it is known that the university is close to the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries in the Louisiana-Texas belt. Professor Khan saw this fact as a great opportunity for him to get access to these sectors of the industry because he is quite interested in the energy and the power research activity, which is also his primary research focus. The access to these industries was what made him positively consider MSU as a great choice.      

In a question about his first impressions of McNeese, he said that he is still learning new things every day. One of his first comments was about the climate of the city in comparison with the climate of the previous city in which he was teaching, New York. Dr. Khan earned his PhD degree in Florida, so he is accustomed to the warm weather of Louisiana. More importantly, what has really impressed Dr. Khan is the potential of the university. As he supports, “McNeese has a lot of opportunity that is not explored at its full strength”. Dr. Khan believes that the university has a potential to become more efficient and provide more opportunities to its students, something that he wants to develop through his work. About the students, Dr. Khan said that he is really satisfied with the fact that he “found students to be very cooperative and willing to learn”. During our interview, professor Khan was friendly and polite. He stated that every student who wants to achieve success should be really focused on what he is doing and should not get disappointed after negative results. The key to an engineer’s success is to be persistent and not give up when difficulties come. Being able to focus on a career as an engineer should enhance one’s incentives to follow the sector. In addition, a student who wants to be successful should plan ahead of schedule and never wait for the last minute to start a project. According to professor Khan, planning is a major factor of success in an engineer’s career in overall. Professor Khan’s teaching philosophy revolves around learning in a way that one can implement knowledge in real life circumstances. This is his teaching philosophy and the way he thinks as well. Dr. Khan considers himself a lifelong learner, who has the opportunity to constantly learn and revise his knowledge through his profession. In overall, his teaching philosophy focuses on exploring real life problems through solutions acquired from the learning process. Dr. Khan recalls how and when he decided to become a professor:

“I don’t exactly remember when. Maybe when I was a student the idea came along my way. Probably, my family background played a part in this. My ancestors were teachers who used to teach in various levels, from elementary school to medical college level. My parents and my grandparents used to teach. So, that might be the source of my inspiration, but it’s not the main reason. The truth is that I have the opportunity to learn more when I teach. I used to work for the industry too. I have worked for the power and the telecommunication industry. I think that the idea of being a professor was cultivated when I was a student doing research. I think that was what incited me to choose a job in the academia. It gives me the opportunity to be involved in a life-long learning process. I like to learn and implement this knowledge into the industry. I think when I was doing research as a graduate student or as a senior level undergraduate student was the time I knew what I want to do with my career.”  

You can find Dr.Khan at his office in Drew Hall 121 or contact him via email to mkhan@mcneese.edu