My teaching philosophy centers on creating learning environments in which students with varied backgrounds, experiences, and goals can thrive. I use the acronym DIVERSE to represent seven principles that guide my teaching:
Democratic — inviting student input, sharing responsibility for learning, and building a collaborative classroom community.
Innovative — thoughtfully integrating new technologies and designing assignments that encourage creativity and exploration.
Valid — grounding teaching and assessment in evidence-based practices, such as frequent low-stakes retrieval opportunities with feedback.
Empowering — developing students’ critical-thinking and scientific-literacy skills so they can evaluate evidence and become informed agents of change.
Relevant — connecting course concepts to students’ lives, current issues, and real-world applications.
Supportive — creating inclusive and equitable structures that give every student a meaningful opportunity to learn and succeed.
Evolving — continually refining my teaching through student feedback, reflection, pedagogical research, and ongoing professional development.
I have experience teaching graduate and undergraduate courses and seminars on human cognition and memory, research methods and statistics, writing, introductory psychology, and professional development. I have also taught hands-on science and engineering topics to elementary students (through Mad Science of San Diego), provided piano lessons to children and adults, and tutored K-college students in a variety of topics.
Courses I Teach at SCU:
PSYC 51/52: Statistics and Methods in Psychology I and II
PSYC 131: Cognitive Psychology
PSYC 138: Human Memory
PSYC 133AT: Advanced Topics in Cognitive Psychology