Teaching & Mentorship

I embrace teaching and mentoring as highlights of my academic career.

My teaching philosophy is guided by the principles of Student-Centered Learning and Universal Design for Learning.

My goals as an educator are to:

1. Maximize real-world applications of learned material beyond the classroom.

I make it clear to my students that the purpose of education is not to memorize facts in isolation, but rather to build the knowledge and critical thinking skills needed to transfer, generalize, and apply facts to life outside of the classroom.

2. Optimize individual choice and autonomy in the classroom.

I want to help my students develop an intrinsically motivated and lifelong love for learning. Students have a say in what they learn and how they are evaluated.

3. Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom.

I aim to foster a safe and supportive environment where students feel empowered to share their thoughts and feelings while being their most authentic selves. I also design my courses to proactively meet the needs of all students.

Check out an example of my syllabus for Developmental Psychology here

In the lab, I strive to provide students with hands-on experience through all steps of the research process.

Students can expect to develop technical skills in quantitative and qualitative research methods, including:

Writing literature reviews
Recruiting and scheduling participants
Administering and scoring neuropsychological assessments and naturalistic behavioral protocols
Collecting, processing, analyzing, and interpreting fNIRS neuroimaging data
Developing and implementing behavioral coding schemes
Conducting qualitative content analysis
Transcribing natural language samples
Implementing advanced quantitative statistics (e.g., structural equation modeling)
Analyzing large scale, publicly-available datasets
Preparing manuscripts for publication
Presenting research findings at local and international conferences