My full teaching portfolio is available here: Teaching Portfolio. It includes a detailed teaching philosophy, list of teaching interests and qualifications, as well as student evaluations of my teaching. Course syllabi for Introduction to International Relations and Research Methods are also available to download here.
Teaching is very important to me and I have had a number of opportunities at UCSB to gain experience teaching political science and to develop my own teaching philosophy. I taught an upper division course in international relations theory in the summer of 2008 at the request of the Department of Political Science. Teaching an upper division class of 30 students allowed me to develop my skills as a lecturer and employ a number of active learning techniques, while still maintaining the critical discussion that is so important to my teaching approach.
In the fall of 2007, I led an independent research course on presidential rhetoric and the war on terror. The students in the course were a select group of upper division students who expressed interest in some of my ongoing research. This course focused on the substance of framing dynamics and presidential rhetoric as well as the methodological skills needed to code and categorize presidential statements. Teaching this course was an extraordinarily rewarding experience. The students were engaged in the research, eager to learn, and a great help to me. By working with only 8 students in this class, I was able to mentor each student personally and share in their successes as they graduated, were accepted to law school, and were offered internships in DC.
During my second year in graduate school I began working as a teaching assistant and was able to TA for a number of international relations and American politics courses. During this time, I developed my skills as a teacher by working with small groups of students (the average section size was less than 20) and leading in depth discussions.
I am dedicated to being a good teacher and am also interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning. I was one of only two graduate students invited to present independent research at APSA’s Teaching and Learning Conference in 2008 and I am currently working on a scholarly piece about using current events to develop classroom simulations. In 2008 I was awarded an instructional improvement grant by the University of California Santa Barbara to continue my efforts to develop and archive active learning activities to assist in teaching political science.
