Teaching Philosophy
Teaching for me has always been a calling and a central part of my identity. As such I take great satisfaction when I can purposefully engage my students in a variety of issues related to diversity and social justice. To this end, I have always taught a variety of courses that center on understanding the experiences of “others” - such as the mentally ill, the undocumented and the displaced, so that students can use this knowledge to initiate social change and decrease distress. I want to teach students about the world to help make them more fully aware of what needs to be addressed and to help get them more engaged in the world.
Therefore, I firmly believe that my role as a professor is not only about providing content-specific knowledge, but also about modeling a series of interactions that make my students more mindful and aware of their place in the world. To quote the chemist Anthony Standen, my job as a professor is to “instill some trace of a divine dissatisfaction with our miserable social environment” in the hopes that my students will then go and change that environment in some way (Standen, 1950). Thus, both in my content delivery and interpersonal relationships, my goal is the development of critical consciousness, or conscientization, wherein students can employ what they learn, within and outside of the classroom.
This is my academic mission statement - I teach others so that they can use what they have learned to empower others; I engage in service in order to mentor others so they can, in turn, support others, and finally, I engage in research in order to document the experiences of those who have historically been underrepresented in the field of psychology with the intent that this work can be used to reduce social suffering.
Teaching for me has always been a calling and a central part of my identity. As such I take great satisfaction when I can purposefully engage my students in a variety of issues related to diversity and social justice. To this end, I have always taught a variety of courses that center on understanding the experiences of “others” - such as the mentally ill, the undocumented and the displaced, so that students can use this knowledge to initiate social change and decrease distress. I want to teach students about the world to help make them more fully aware of what needs to be addressed and to help get them more engaged in the world.
Therefore, I firmly believe that my role as a professor is not only about providing content-specific knowledge, but also about modeling a series of interactions that make my students more mindful and aware of their place in the world. To quote the chemist Anthony Standen, my job as a professor is to “instill some trace of a divine dissatisfaction with our miserable social environment” in the hopes that my students will then go and change that environment in some way (Standen, 1950). Thus, both in my content delivery and interpersonal relationships, my goal is the development of critical consciousness, or conscientization, wherein students can employ what they learn, within and outside of the classroom.
This is my academic mission statement - I teach others so that they can use what they have learned to empower others; I engage in service in order to mentor others so they can, in turn, support others, and finally, I engage in research in order to document the experiences of those who have historically been underrepresented in the field of psychology with the intent that this work can be used to reduce social suffering.