Teaching & Outreach
In the area of undergraduate education, Bernstein teaches the Junior-level EE30357, Electronic and Optoelectronic Devices. Students build on the fundamentals of semiconductors to understand how electrons and holes interact to form bipolar and field-effect transistors and thyristors, as well as optical devices, including lasers.
More recently, Bernstein has created a new Sophomore-level, 2-credit course, EE20225, Introduction to Electrical Engineering. The course comprises one lecture and one 3-hour laboratory per week. The activities include such topics as electronic materials; electronic measurement equipment; 3-phase power and the power grid; filters, Fourier and frequency domain; radio transmission and amplitude modulation; semiconductor devices; lighting technology and solar cells; analog-to-digital, digital-to-analog conversion, and the Nyquist criterion; and batteries and power supplies.
In the area of graduate education, Bernstein has innovated several specialized courses intended specifically to help graduate students in their laboratory research by covering the areas of scanning electron microscopy, vacuum technology, and various imaging methods for nanotechnology. He currently teaches these topics as directed reading courses while devoting his main teaching responsibilities to his undergraduate courses.
Bernstein is engaged in several outreach projects, the most active of which is teaching undergraduates how to use a scanning electron microscope (SEM) for self-directed, curiosity-driven research. Bernstein has converted an Elionix SRA-8900FE, thermal field emission SEM to be used for summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) instruction, undergraduate research, and K-12 outreach. Students and teachers are invited to use the SEM at their convenience for any purpose ranging from the sheer fun of looking at cool stuff like bugs, to structured undergraduate research, to curriculum development.