Teaching Approach

 

My approach to teaching is guided by two fundamental principles:

Science is for everyone.

Social science truly has the power to make the world a better place.

 

Scott Plous (Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, 2012) has coined the term "action teaching" to describe a similar approach: "one that contributes to peace, social justice, and sustainable living at the same time as it educates students."

 

(Details for how to nominate yourself are nested under each national award.)

  • 2023: Awarded by Division 2 of the American Psychological Association to a single early-career faculty member in recognition of outstanding teaching of psychology. Award citation to be published in Teaching of Psychology, 50(4).

    I am the fourth person in 40+ years (and first ever person of color!) to win two STP Excellence in Teaching Awards dedicated to different career stages. (McKeachie: 2016; Halonen: 2023.)

    Learn more + nominate yourself for this award here.

  • 2020: Recognizes one psychology instructor chosen to represent SPSSI (Division 9 of the American Psychological Association) as a sponsored speaker at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology.

    I am the most junior faculty member (<2 years post-Ph.D.) to win this award since its inception.

    Award address: “Pedagogy of the Empowered: Fostering Everyday Activism in Intro Psych (and Beyond).”

    Learn more + nominate yourself for this award here.

  • 2018: Awarded by Division 9 of the American Psychological Association to five psychology instructors in recognition of innovative assignments that advance students’ understanding of social issues.

    The teaching resource at hand (a reflective writing assignment based on a personal Day of Silence) is available here. A complete archive of similar award-winning teaching resources can be found here.

    Learn more + nominate yourself for this award here.

  • 2017: Awarded to one USC graduate student per academic department.

  • 2016: Awarded by Division 2 of the American Psychological Association to a single graduate student in recognition of outstanding teaching of psychology. Award citation published in Teaching of Psychology, 43(4).

    Award address: “Students Meet World: Dreaming, Trying, and Doing Good with Psychological Science.”

    Learn more + nominate yourself for this award here.

  • 2015: Awarded to one USC graduate student per academic department.

  • 2015-2016: Awarded to six graduate students at USC. Carried the university's most generous annual stipend and the opportunity to serve as the instructor of record for an undergraduate course of one’s own design.

    Course: “The Frontal Lobe: From Function to Philosophy”

  • 2014-2017: Teach-the-teacher volunteer position offered to approximately 15 graduate students at USC.

    Served as Chair of the TA Fellows from 2015-2017.

 
 

Inclusive + Infographic Syllabi

Started from the screenshots in some semi-viral tweets and now we’re here. By long-awaited popular demand, full-text versions of the syllabi for both of my courses can be found below.

Both of these syllabi are Creative Commons-licensed (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), so you’re more than welcome to borrow policies, exact wording, and/or the design as long as you credit me and also put the same kind of Creative Commons license on your own syllabus. (Learn more about CC licensing and attribution here.)

If do you adapt anything for your own syllabi, please also consider signing my guestbook! (There’s no h-index for teaching resources/impact, but, so help me, I’m not NOT going to try.)

Designed with Pages for Mac. Color palettes courtesy of Coolors and Colours Cafe.

Extra Content to ✨ Spruce Up ✨ Your Lectures

If you’ve ever seen me teach a class or give a talk, you know that my slides are filled with screenshots of news stories, popular science coverage, thinkpieces, and memes relevant to the topic at hand. Powered by Raindrop.io, here’s my entire stash of bookmarks.

I’ve been collecting these links since I was a junior in college, so there’s A LOT here. Thankfully, the database is searchable, and that’s the only way I recommend you use it. (Search results will include links with your keywords appearing in the headline or, where available, the automatically generated article description, but not the full text.)

Note: I’ll bookmark links for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it’s a write-up of a study that will hopefully change the way my students see the world, maybe it’s an op-ed that I can’t wait to publicly dunk on (educationally); they’re all in here. (Gentle reminder: It is not possible for me—one person—to annotate thousands of links explaining how and why I might personally teach with each one.) As the ancient proverb goes, RTs ≠ endorsements.

Happy sprucing!