I am highly dedicated to teaching and I have been involved in higher education and undergraduate instruction since 1999. Teaching in diverse contexts has made me an extraordinarily well-rounded academic educator and researcher with a healthy knowledge and understanding of the international political arena from a variety of viewpoints. My combined professional experiences, coupled with my academic background allow me to make relevant linkages between on-going theoretical debates and current institutional practices, both conceptually and empirically. Reading, writing, critical thinking, and verbal communication are central goals of my pedagogical approach.
My goal as an educator is straight-forward: I teach students to develop a love of learning, a passion for thinking critically about how to identify solutions to real world problems and for taking action, and then I teach them to articulate their ideas coherently through presentation and writing. I have taught at a number of universities in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Honduras, and for a wide range of socio-economic groups. Adapting my approach to different audiences has always required me to remain self-directed, resourceful, and innovative. Regardless of circumstances, several core characteristics of my approach remain consistent. I create each of my courses so that students learn how to construct, defend, and criticize arguments; identify and assess tacit assumptions; and gather and evaluate evidence qualitatively and quantitatively.
For example, in several of my courses, I assign each student a commodity and a country (e.g. mahogany/Brazil, shrimp/Thailand, cocoa/Ghana, nickel/Madagascar, coal/China) to research and present on. My approach allows me to address a range of subjects depending on the focus of a specific course – governance, politics of development, international relations, geography, environmental politics and security, natural resource management, political ecology, trade and environment – while grounding the subject matter in a real world situation related to primary sectors – forestry, fisheries, agriculture, mining, and energy. Giving students a specific commodity that originates in a specific place to focus on makes it possible for students to learn to transition their thinking about the issues from local to global more seamlessly than when dealing only in the theoretical or the technical realm. Finally, this approach is particularly advantageous for those students seeking to develop regional or area expertise, allowing them to dig deep while thinking broadly from a range of perspectives.
In short, my goal is to integrate knowledge across disciplines and illuminate its relevance in specific contexts to provide students with a strong basis to contemplate, analyze, and communicate in a serious and intellectually rigorous manner. Regardless of the formal discipline that students are studying, or that I am teaching, I always hold students to high standards and provide them with the support they need to meet those standards, from one on one mentoring to guidance on making the most of university-provided resources. As a result, my approach to instructional analysis and design is implicitly focused toward developing students’ core competencies in these areas:
- Intellectual: critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, problem solving, evaluation.
- Communication: lectures or dialogues in seminar format, speaking, listening, reading, writing, presenting (oral/written), giving and receiving feedback.
- Organizational: self-assessment, working independently, responsibility, initiative, time management, and increased awareness of career options within the field.
- Interpersonal: teamwork, leadership, negotiating, networking, co-managing teams and time.