Aditya Johri – 2022 Mentoring Excellence Award Recipient

Dr. Johri’s Nomination

I would like to nominate Dr. Aditya Johri for the OSCAR Mentoring Excellence Award. Dr. Johri has been a staunch supporter of my own research throughout my time at GMU and has made my transition into my academic program comfortable through the trying times of the COVID pandemic. It is a nerve-wracking experience to move across the country to an entirely new state and start a new program, but Dr. Johri has been the difference-maker throughout.

However, I see Dr. Johri’s commitment to student support, not just in my own mentorship. As a GTA, I observed how Dr. Johri created a collaborative environment for the students in the class to engage with the resources and build vitally essential support networks. Throughout the course, Dr. Johri made the connections between the theory, the practice, and how students can be a part of the change through getting involved in undergraduate research. Dr. Johri is an inspiring instructor with a keen pulse on the future of technology and how it affects people through the media we use. This shows through the types of immersive learning experience he builds into the class. Dr. Johri provides relevant real-world examples by linking the theoretical resources presented in the class to engaging activities such as discussion-based role-play scenarios. The role-play component especially is a unique way of delivering the course materials, and students showed nothing but praise for the distinct use of the medium. Dr. Johri has gone out of his way to create opportunities for students to engage in situated learning pedagogy through a very learning-by-doing approach. Through important discussions on facial recognition technology, the implications of corporate social responsibility, and what students can learn about ethics as early-career professionals, Dr. Johri compassionately led the students to explore complex and challenging scenarios. The most important aspect; he did this in a way that still established a positive learning environment for everyone involved.

I always appreciate how Dr. Johri’s classes challenge everyone in the room to think critically and introspectively about the course material. I have served as a Teaching Assistant for over seven years, but assisting with Dr. Johri’s classes has been the first opportunity where I have learned just as much as the students I am working with. To me, this is a characteristic of a quality classroom environment. Through the course assignments and role-play activities, I was consistently challenged to think of how the technologies truly affect us as participants of a technology-driven society. Bringing in conversations with other faculty members and industry professionals representing other domains has been an invaluable resource. These discussions among other thinkers who can attest to the importance of technology ethics no matter the specific discipline of engineering or computing highlights the importance and timeliness of Dr. Johri’s teaching philosophy. These assignments encouraged me to think differently about the place of technology ethics in our society today. Dr. Johri’s classroom discourse has carried over into other areas of my academic studies and given me the confidence to engage in meaningful conversations with my peers about this challenging topic.

After the course was over, Dr. Johri encouraged students to continue working on the concepts in whatever way they could. Through an NSF grant, Dr. Johri was able to procure funding for students to perform a summer internship and continue engaging with the topics we discussed during the class. Of the 12 interns we had last summer, three students were initially a part of the class and continued working with the topics introduced in the course. Dr. Johri allowed them to pick topics from the class they were most interested in and guided them in collecting data, analyzing it, and finally bringing it together in the form of a publication. From the student reflection exercises, it was evident that students appreciated this style of learning and research. In a world of rules, the interns were given the power to create their means of interaction. I have no doubt this will be a fundamental experience for these students.