As an educator
As an educator, Dr. Leonard clearly demonstrates both a keen interest and high standard of excellence in teaching. While at Georgia Tech, Dr. Leonard has developed four graduate level courses; one core CEE undergraduate course; advised or co-advised seven doctoral students (including Daiheng Ni, a co-author on six of Dr. Leonard’s publications) and taught portions of twenty-four continuing education courses. He consistently ranked among the best teachers (as quantified by in-class teaching evaluations) in CEE. Professor Leonard effectively applies teaching technologies to enhance his courses, including creative delivery of course materials via the worldwide web (See http://traffic.ce.gatech.edu/), and has instructed other professors about teaching technologies as part of the Board of Regents Faculty Development Workshop, and the Center for Enhanced Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Georgia Tech.
From 2000-2002, Professor Leonard coordinated a cross-disciplinary team, including faculty from the schools of mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering and the College of Computing, responsible for developing and deploying a College of Engineering-wide undergraduate course titled "COE 1361 - Computing for Engineers." Concepts and teaching strategies in COE 1361 represented a new approach for introducing engineers to problem solving, computing, and programming. These initial efforts at redefining how computing is introduced to engineers directly led to development of the current introductory computing course taught by the College of Computing,“CS1371 – Computing for Engineers.”
As part of a 1998 SUCCEED Faculty Development grant, Professor Leonard developed and implemented an integrated system for enhanced assessment and feedback. This system aids the instructor in the creation of a spreadsheet-base grade book and uses this grade book to automatically provide students with private electronic mail updates of their current in-class performance. Further, the system automatically generates web pages documenting overall class performance, allowing the student to graphically compare their performance with that of their classmates.