Current Courses
Spring 2025
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LEAP 1500-001
Engineering & IdentityLocation: WEB L120 (WEB L120) -
LEAP 1500-002
Engineering & IdentityLocation: WEB L120 (WEB L120) -
LEAP 1500-090
Engineering & IdentityLocation: ONLN (Online) -
LEAP 1500-291
Engineering & Identity -
LEAP 2002-001
Ldrshp & Com: LEAP PA S -
WRTG 2010-030
Intermediate WritingLocation: GC 2880 (GC 2880) -
WRTG 2010-031
Intermediate WritingLocation: GC 3640 (GC 3640)
Fall 2024
Summer 2024
Teaching Philosophy
ENGAGED, CONTEXTUALIZED, APPLICABLE
I believe that learning takes place when knowledge has been understood, contextualized,
and applied. In our complicated, modern world, students need to know why they are
learning what they are learning—they need to know how specific knowledge fits into
their particular academic program and the larger context of academia as a whole. All too
often, higher education in America confounds like a foggy windshield; students can’t tell
where they are going because they can’t see where they are. Transparency, therefore, is
one of the most important aspects of my teaching: I strive to explain how the material we
cover fits not only into students’ degree programs but also how it figures into academia
as a whole. I do not stand before my class delivering an interpretation of material,
expecting my students to remember and use it. Instead, when I present material I explain
who it comes from, why they crafted it the way the way they did, and how it will impact
my students’ futures.
I view my place in the classroom as the head organizer of active learning experiences: I
supply and arrange materials that the students are responsible for reading. Then, I help
explain and put that material into context for them. After brief lectures, my students
engage in collaborative or individual activities followed by large group discussion. The
activities we do in class relate specifically to large individual and team projects that
provide both practice and assessment. This is the style I have developed over the past 15
years. I find that moving the students from one activity to the next keeps them alert and
engaged. Continual practice in the classroom with my supervision allows me to assess
my students’ learning and prepare them for more significant assessments.
One concept pertinent to both the Social Science and Diversity/Humanities LEAP
courses I teach concerns the fact that ideas mean differently across cultures. The students
read an article about how cultural priorities influence the political interactions of nations.
And while they often feel they have understood the point after reading about how
economic hardship reduces a people’s ability to assess risk or religious priorities
encourage different choices than commercial interests do, this intellectual understanding
does not trigger the kind of immediate and visceral understanding they gain from a game
we play called The Emperor’s Pot.
In this game, the students are arranged into two groups or “cultures.” Each team then
establishes its own cultural priorities and characteristics. A task is determined for each
culture in relation to the other, such as acquiring an important resource. Both groups must
send a convoy of representatives to develop a relationship with the other culture for
purposes of accomplishing the task. After a few rounds of meetings and negotiations, the
whole class comes back together to discuss what they learned about the other group and
how their cultural priorities (which are intentionally very different) affected their actions.
I find that putting intellectual concepts into practice this way helps students remember
not only the concepts but the critical issues involved in their enactment. These topics then
have a greater meaning and applicability—they have been learned better than a simple
intellectual understanding allows.
Another area of learning in all of my classes concerns teamwork. I find that when a team
has practiced interacting and making decisions about hypothetical situations together,
they are better able to make difficult decisions when real conflicts arise. After teams are
assigned in my classes, I have students engage in a role-playing activity.
We study a list of styles about how different people respond to and engage in conflict, as
well as some of the reasons people engage in one way or another. Teams are given a
scenario, such as revising an assignment according to specific feedback from the
instructor. Each student is assigned a style to enact in the roleplay situation. Then teams
are asked to enact a team meeting to accomplish the task while another team watches.
After one team has completed the assignment, the other team has the opportunity to act
out the meeting. When everyone has had the chance to engage in the hypothetical
situation with people of differing engagement styles, we come together as a large group
to discuss what it was like “to be” each character. The exercise helps students develop
empathy for people with different conflict styles and generally results in more tolerance
for team members’ differences. Providing space for students to act and feel in different
positions gives them a broader range of experience and empathy than simply reading and
discussing engagement styles as an intellectual concept. In the roleplay, students have a
chance to practice patience that can be recalled in an actual situation.
By combining learning activities with short lectures and Socratic discussion, my
classroom maintains a focus on student involvement and engagement. In guiding my
students, I provide coaching and consultation. My greatest hope for them is that our
activities in class help them to develop skills, express themselves, and broaden their
understanding of the university as a whole. My most proud moments are when those
students who moved on several semesters past come back to my office and let me know
that they’ve succeeded. My very small role in the lives they forge makes me love and appreciate
my job as a teacher more than any other.