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A Passion for Physics and Teaching
In the world of quantum physics, uncertainty rules—everything can be both true and false at once. But there’s one thing that is certain about quantum physics being taught by Chitra Rangan: she is fully committed to doing the best job possible.
Rangan was born and grew up in Chennai, one of the four biggest cities of India. As a child, Rangan loved to read. “My parents used to have a budget for clothes for me. Every year they would say, you get this much money to get clothes. And I would negotiate and say, can I have a little bit of that to buy books instead?”
She found inspiration in the works of Enid Blyton, the prolific British author behind countless children’s books. Two Blyton series about boarding schools inspired her to want to become a teacher.
By the time she reached high school, book purchases became a lot easier. In Grade 10, she received a national scholarship, which funded the rest of her schooling while in India and came with a book grant. “I actually had money to buy books, including books from the UK, US, or Canada, which are very expensive in Indian rupees.”
Rangan said she always had an interest in science and in high school she started to identify it as her favorite subject. She began to tutor many of the neighbor’s children for free. “I was tutoring them in a variety of subjects: math, chemistry, physics, and even some languages in French and Hindi. But I found that I really enjoyed explaining physics.”
While earning her undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Madras (now Chennai), she got exposure to doing research, and she really enjoyed it. “I did research for a summer and then made a conference presentation. I got bitten by the research bug. I said, I’ll come back to teaching later.”
She went on to do her master’s in physics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (now Chennai). While doing her masters, she attended a talk by a professor who was visiting from Louisiana State University (LSU), and she said she was completely blown away. She decided to apply to LSU and ended up working with him to do her PhD.
From there, she did her postdoc at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in part because she had just got married at the end of her PhD and her husband lived in Michigan.
During her postdoc, she attended a three-month-long program called Preparing Future Faculty, run by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). “It was a combination of a variety of workshops plus you had a teaching mentor, and you taught. At the end of it, I knew that I wanted to be in a comprehensive university where both research and teaching was important.”
As luck would have it, the University of Windsor was hiring in the area of quantum physics, offering the perfect opportunity she was seeking—an institution that valued both research and teaching equally. “There’s only so many academic positions. At the same time, you have to finish your postdoc at a time when they are hiring in your field in a place you feel you will fit into. Finding all those combinations was definitely luck.”
100 Years of Quantum Discovery
The United Nations has declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. The study of quantum physics started in 1925, marking 100 years of groundbreaking discoveries, innovation, and deeper understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. “Every piece of technology that we use is based on quantum physics,” said Rangan.
Her research focuses on quantum sensors and quantum imaging. She and her students are designing and developing highly sensitive sensors capable of detecting extremely fine details, such as cancer biomarkers. “Right now, if there’s a cancer biomarker in your blood, it is surrounded by other molecules, so there’s a lot of noise in your signals. Quantum imaging will basically detect phenomena at the quantum level with much higher resolution.”
Rangan noted that while some students find the nonintuitive nature of quantum physics challenging, the struggle itself is an essential part of the learning process. She said if things are obvious, it’s easy to forget them, but if something is counterintuitive, then your brain remembers it for a longer time. “In that sense, it’s actually easier for retention if something is hard and nonintuitive.”
She said a lot of models are used in physics education to simplify complex concepts and visualize abstract ideas to enhance student understanding. Physics, she said, is about observing what can be measured and inferring what lies beneath by building models to explain underlying phenomena.
She used ocean waves as an example: When observing ocean waves, one might imagine them moving straight toward the shore, she said. In reality, they break, rise, fall, and interfere, forming complex patterns. “We simplify these behaviors into models, where both intuitive and non-intuitive models are developed.”
Rangan points out that physics education requires scaffolding, progressing step by step through multiple years. “In many other disciplines, you can have a very small base of knowledge and then rapidly grow up because the knowledge is organized like a silo. In physics, that’s not so easy to do. You really need a very broad base, and then you can build up to this pyramid.”
She said the advantage of this structure is that the peak of the pyramid can shift, allowing physicists to specialize in different areas while maintaining a strong foundational understanding.
Physics Education at UWindsor
Rangan noted that while physics curricula across North America are largely standardized, following a similar model-building approach, UWindsor’s physics department has its differences. “We use active learning. We use a lot of hands-on work in class for them to learn things.”
“The traditional style of teaching physics is highly structured and didactic—the professor writes information on the board, students copy it down and then solve practice problems before submitting their work.” For the first five years when Rangan was an assistant professor, she followed this model. She said she was known for being a very good lecturer and had strong evaluations, but student grades followed a bell curve. “I had students who would always get a lot of A’s, and then I’d have students who would get a B-minus or a C, and then I’d get students with lower grades. But my scores were absolutely fabulous.”
She wanted to incorporate more research, evidence-based teaching methods, so she applied for CTL CLIF grants. Her new approach, which included active learning and scaffolded problem solving, had mixed reviews from students, but improved learning outcomes. “Students would get grades centered at a B plus – it was a more Poisson distribution. I was very proud of that, even though my teaching evaluations didn’t reflect that, but the students actually benefited by this. They were learning better.”
Building on this, she started a community of practice called the Promoters of Experiential, Active, and Research-Based Learning in Science (PEARLS). She found that her fellow faculty members in science wanted to teach well, but didn’t have time to find out what evidence-based techniques worked. “Developing active learning or other kind of methods is not easy. It takes time because you have to develop it, test it, and then implement it.”
She said she invited science faculty members to share their implementation strategies along with their effects and impact, with fellow faculty members. PEARLS also had Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman come and talk about his innovations in his first-year physics classroom. “That was a lot more impactful than me saying it, even though the message we were conveying was the same.”
She said it’s not uncommon to find members of her department informally meeting in the hallways at the end of day to chat about teaching. “We constantly talk about what have you taught? How does that fit? How does that flow into what I’m going to teach? We are all very passionate about teaching.”
Rangan also worked on program development, including teaching initiatives. For example, she helped establish course-sharing with other universities to expand graduate course options and developed the Honors Certificate in Physics.
Her commitment to teaching excellence and innovation earned her the Educational Leadership Award (2021), which honours the contributions of individuals who have led significant and sustained initiatives to improve teaching, curriculum, teaching spaces and resources, and policies and procedures that promote effective teaching.
In 2019, she was honored with the Dr. Alan Wright Award for Exemplary Online & Technology-Enhanced Teaching in recognition of her development of numerous online courses. She acknowledged Mark Lubrick from the Office of Open Learning for his support in helping her achieve her goals. “To teach in an active way online, especially for an asynchronous class, that was really challenging.”
This experience proved invaluable when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. “One of the first things I did was to produce a LinkedIn post that showed instructors how to take their current in-person class and transform it into an online class. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it got a lot of hits. So that was pretty cool.”
In addition to the awards mentioned above, Rangan has also been recognized for her work in the past receiving the Roger Thibert Teaching Excellence Award (2011), the Canadian Association of Physicists Medal for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduate Physics (2015).
Rangan continues to push boundaries in researching, teaching, and mentoring the next generation of physicists. The uncertainty that defines quantum physics may remain, but her unwavering dedication to teaching and learning remains a constant.
Peter brings extensive expertise in multimedia to support CTL programs, website design, and special events. With around 25 years of experience in graphic and web design, he brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. He is a graduate of Print Journalism and Digital Media from Conestoga College, and and Communication, Media and Film from the University of Windsor.
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