Courses Taught

• ARE 346P – HVAC Design (UT Austin): In this course, I teach students the the scientific and engineering fundamentals of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning technology. The class starts with a high-level review of HVAC systems and components, followed by a review of classical thermodynamics. Then, students learn to analyze and design vapor compression cycles, heat exchangers, cooling towers, chillers, ducts, fans, controls, and energy recovery. The class culminates in a group projects in which students determine thermal loads on a building, develop a thermodynamic model for the HVAC system needed to condition the building, and perform basic sizing and analysis of their HVAC system. The class places an emphasis on equipment fundamentals (e.g., how to analyze a vapor compression cycle), preparing students to not only select HVAC equipment for buildings, but to have deep understanding of the underlying physics behind all major components in an HVAC system. The course includes extensive use of Engineering Equation Solver or Python to practice real-world programming skills.
  • Fall 2025 (Undergraduate + Graduate)
  • Fall 2026 (Expected)
• CE 397 – Sustainable Energy for the Built Environment (UT Austin): In this course, we explore trends in energy production and utilization, with a particular emphasis on buildings. Students learn to develop analytical models for a wide range of sustainable energy technologies that can be integrated with the built environment, including solar PV, solar thermal, combined heat and power, district cooling, geothermal energy, geothermal cooling/heating, thermal energy storage, solar-powered HVAC technologies, and more. The course goes well beyond qualitiative descriptions of technologies and trends and instead places a heavy emphasis on understanding the underlying physics behind these technologies and developing analytical, physical models for them. Furthermore, the course integrated eceonomic analysis techniques, teaching students to analyze the lifecycle economics of sustainable energy technologies and comparing these technologies against baseline conventional technologies. This course implements extensive programming assignments and projects to enable parametric analysis of energy technologies.
  • Spring 2025 (Graduate)
  • Spring 2026 (Graduate + Undergraduate)
• ME 200 – Thermodynamics, Purdue University, Fall 2023

Teaching Interests

2023 Dean’s Teaching Fellowship

Purdue has established many teaching fellowships to help aspiring professors develop teaching skills and to prepare them to be successful educators. The Dean’s Teaching Fellowship is a college-wide program, selecting from the largest and most competitive pool of applicants.

“The Dean’s Teaching Fellowship provides an opportunity for senior graduate students to practice, establish and implement their own approaches to teaching undergraduates. Graduate student leaders can engage in this meaningful teaching experience and connect with other leaders across the College of Engineering.”

Purdue College of Engineering

Dr. Fix was selected as a 2023 Dean’s Teaching Fellow at Purdue. He taught his own section of ME 200 (undergraduate thermodynamics) in the Fall semester of 2023.

“At my undergraduate institution (University of Tulsa), I had a very positive teaching-learning experience with my professors, and that really drew me towards pursuing an academic career, before discovering research. I’m very excited to start my teaching career as a Dean’s Teaching Fellow as I believe teaching and mentoring the next generation of problem solvers is incredibly important.”

Andrew Fix