TEACHING
My teaching and mentoring philosophies center around two primary goals: 1) I encourage students to develop independence of thought rather than to accept information at face value; and 2) I strive to create a classroom and research environment in which every student feels a sense of belonging in a collective learning community. I teach both content and methods courses and have mentored over 40 research assistants from diverse backgrounds. These experiences have solidified my passion for fostering independence and my belief that all students can succeed when instructors create a community in which students are challenged and supported.
DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION AND INTERGROUP BIASES
Instructor of Record
This capstone course (30 students) explores children’s representations and evaluations of different social categories (e.g., race, gender, age, disability) in their environment, as well as the malleability of children’s social biases. To this end, we consider relevant empirical evidence on infants’ and children’ social development addressing a wide range of questions such as: What social categories are infants sensitive to, and how does their sensitivity to social categories change over the course of development? What learning mechanisms support the acquisition of social categories? Why do children like and respect members of some groups more than others? Do intergroup biases reflect ingroup favoritism or outgroup derogation? Is it possible to prevent the development of intergroup biases? Once developed, are there effective strategies to reduce children’s intergroup biases?
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Instructor of Record
Many of you are already social psychologists, even if you don’t know it yet. Are you fascinated by other people and their relationships? Do you wonder why other people sometimes interpret things differently than you do? Have you ever tried to change someone’s attitudes or behaviors? Do you think about the ways that activists try to achieve social change? Do you find yourself asking why some people are petty, mean, selfish, or cruel while others are altruistic, helpful, and selfless?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’re ready to dive in as a social psychologist. In this course, we will delve into such questions and learn how we scientifically examine how humans think about, interact with, and influence one another.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Teaching Assistant/Section Leader
GRADUATE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS
Teaching Assistant/Section Leader
Teaching Assistant
The goal of this class is to familiarize you with a statistical data analysis procedure called the general linear model. After a short introduction on reliability and validity, we will spend most of the semester on regression analysis as a tool for analyzing data from psychological experiments. We will give special attention to the interpretation of regression coefficients, regression models with continuous and categorical predictors, and the interpretation of interaction effects in regression analysis. We will be using the statistics software R (http://www.r-project.org/).
TEACHING TRAINING
Participant
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Instructor-Learning Environment and Pedagogics Institute (Summer 2018)
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Teaching Seminar, UW-Madison Psychology Department (2017-2018)
BIOPSYCHOLOGY
This course exists to provide you with a foundation in the physiology of behavior. You will learn the “language” of biopsychology first, to provide you with an understanding of the basic mechanisms at work in the nervous system, and the terms used to describe these mechanisms. Then, we will address the specific physiological correlates, especially pharmacological ones, of many types of behavior, such as sleep, eating, and psychological disorders.
This breadth course (100 students) explores how infants and children perceive, think about, and engage with the social world. For example: When and how do children come to appreciate the contents of others’ minds? How do early social relationships influence later ones? What are the origins of prejudice and stereotyping? Why do some children act aggressively toward others? How do peers and parents shape children’s personalities? We will consider these questions and others with an eye toward understanding mechanisms underlying children’s social development.