I have taught a wide range of courses at diverse institutions from across the academic spectrum, including elite universities, regional liberal arts schools and community colleges.
In addition, as part of my postdoc in the Sociology Department at Cornell University, I am affiliated with Cornell's Active Learning Initiative. This position combines elements of faculty development, instructional design, assessment and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Each semester I work with an instructor and a team of TAs, serving as the course’s educational expert. I collaborate with the faculty member to design active learning interventions for the lecture portions of the course, and work with the TAs to make active learning materials for the TA-led discussion sections. In addition, I collect and analyze a variety of data to assess the program's impact, including custom assessments, student evaluations, structured observations (COPUS), and ethnographic fieldnotes. Some of these data are then used in SoTL research projects on effective teaching methods.
Teaching Philosophy
When I teach I consider my most important role to be facilitator-in-chief for students’ learning. By this I mean that an instructor does not pour knowledge into a student like pouring water into an empty vessel. Instead, I create an environment which encourages my students to challenge themselves and take charge of their own learning process. In this way I approach teaching much like a coach approaches mentoring; my job is to guide and challenge the students under my tutelage in order that they can succeed in the broadest way possible. No matter what course I am teaching, I strive to also focus on generalizable skills such as critical reading, thoughtful analysis and good writing that will empower my students in all of their future endeavors. To do this I eschew the traditional lecture format and instead incorporate strategies of learning through doing in several ways. During class time I make frequent use of small groups where students are required to work through problems in teams while I circulate around the room offering guidance and answering questions. This gives people an opportunity to struggle through difficult concepts while having the instructor present as a resource. In addition, I structure out of class work so that students gain experience in real research.
For example, when teaching Religion and Social Life at Cornell University, I designed an activity where my students read and interpreted interviews of atheists describing perceived discrimination in order to better understand aspects of religious identity formation. Likewise, when teaching research methods, I tapped contacts established when working for NORC at the University of Chicago to garner permission to let my class use some of the documents employed by field interviewers on the General Social Survey. These behind-the-scenes examples from real sociological research brings the process of social research alive for my students in a way a mere textbook never could. Other examples of activities I have designed can be found below.